Welcome to the Sholan Alliance.

Welcome to the Home Pages of The Sholan Alliance fan club, a series of books about feline alien telepaths by Lisanne Norman in her science fiction novel "Turning Point" and its sequels.

Our names are N'Ish and Vaughan and we are your guides to the Alliance worlds and the aliens who inhabit them.

We have a new e-mail address for people wanting to put together their Sholan descriptions or our fan club - Please mail Mnokada@sholan-alliance.org.

The main characters of the books are Carrie, a Human female, and Kusac, her mind-bonded feline companion.  In the first novel, Carrie is part of Earth's first colony on a distant planet called Keiss when reptilian alien invaders known as the Valtegans attack and enslave them.

Below are a couple of pictures of us at the recent major UK Science Fiction convention, Reconvene, over the Easter weekend. Don't let anyone tell you the British are staid, they're not! I'm still trying to stop laughing and recover from their masquerade on the Saturday night!

Here you can see me with Lisanne and her friend Pauline at the Adelphi Hotel in Blackpool at Reconvene, and further over, Lisanne with a wonderful Delenn look-alike from Babylon 5. I'm the one holding Kaid, the lucky black cat belonging to our Western Guardian who delegated him (after a major feline character in the series) to have his photo taken instead of her.

NEWS UPDATE 28th April 2000

New Links

News from Eastercon 2001
Sholan Link
Sonique's Furry Links

A new section is being added for the latest news. As yet we don't have a side button for it, but click the link above for now.

The Sholans are a race of cat like humanoid people. Two of their colonies have been attacked by unknown aliens and they are now searching for them.

The Sholan Alliance series is the story of Kusac and Carrie, a Sholan telepath and a human colonist from Keiss, Earth's first colony world.

Kusac's scout ship crashes onto the surface of Keiss. An emergency landing saves his life and that of his crew mates, yet Kusac is badly hurt and can't join the others in their attempt to hide from the alien invaders of Keiss, the Valtegans. So he stays behind and starts to search for help on his own...

These pages contain some additional information about the books, the author, the universe and the fan club, called The Brotherhood of Vartra You can find some information about the ships, the Sholan and other cultures and a list of characters.

The Sholan Alliance series of novels consists of the five books "Turning Point", "Fortune's Wheel", "Fire Margins", "Razor's Edge" and "Dark Nadir". The sixth book, "Stronghold Rising" will be released on June 12th 2000.

Though most of the times there will be a spoiler warning on top of a page that could give things away, you might want to be careful while reading some of the lists and social background pages if you haven't read the books yet.

The list of words and characters, for example, has been compiled and updated for the situation that existed in the end of "Dark Nadir", the fifth book.

Here, by kind permission of DAW Books is an interview with Lisanne Norman.

An Interview With Lisanne Norman by Debra Euler of DAW Books Inc.

DE:   Why are you a writer?

LN:   I write because I love words and their shades of meanings and because I ran out of the kinds of books I wanted to read when I was 8 years old!  I used to read books at the rate of 8 a week, and so kept running out of them and decided I'd write my own.

DE:   Besides providing yourself with matrial, why do you write SF?

LN:   Because it makes me think, because I believe mankind has something to offer the universe.  Because I believe in our future, and I want to live forever!  By reading and writing SF I can feel as if I am alive in the future.

DE:   Do you really like cats?

LN:   Yes, I love them.  I had my first cat for 18.5 years and he was the one who gave me the idea for the short story of a black cat walking through snow.  That story grew into the novel TURNING POINT.

DE:   Are you active in the British or American SF community?

LN:   I'm an active British SF fan and have been since 1977.  I was told recently that I was one of the few fans who made the dream ( of being an SF writer ) come true.

DE:   DARK NADIR is the fifth of the Sholan Alliance series, and your audience has been growing with each installment.  How many more books do you envision, or is this an open ended series?

LN:   Open ended in that as long as you out there are happy to buy them, I'm happy to write them.  I might take a break from the Alliance for a year to do another novel at some point so that the series remains fresh, doesn't become stale for me, but no chance of that yet!
I have parallel stories I can write about some major characters, like Kaid and T'Chebbie's story, etc.  Lots to do if I get the opportunities.

DE:   Have you thought about/written any other SF?

LN:   I have the beginning 4 chapters  and complete draft outline for another SF book, yes but it is set 200 years from the now of the series.  And I have a short story about how Kate and Taynor were kidnapped by the Valtegan and ended up prisoners of the Chemerians and being rescued by the U'Churians.  There wasn't time to put that story into RAZOR'S EDGE, but so far it hasn't got a home yet. Hint, hint!

DE:   Got the hint!  How about fantasy?

LN:   I am doing a series of short stories for DAW anthologies and a UK one, about a character called Mouse who's a young thief on the new Alliance world of Jalna.  I plan to connect them into a full novel about her.  She's based on my role playing character that I have spent over 10 years building up.  Her adventures aren't games turned to fiction becaues I find that doesn't work, but she came so alive during the games for me that she joined Carrie, Kusac, Kaid and the others in nagging me to write about her.  It gets quite noisy inside my head at times with all these people wanting me to write more about them!!

DE:   Hearing voices, eh?  Your plots are getting more and more complicated, and you're constantly introducing more characters.  Have you thought about concentrating on certain characters, leaving some behind, or moving into the next generation?  I'd be interested to see how the new society of geneetically mixed children develops once they're adults.

LN:   Ah, well, I have a trick or three up my sleeve concerning that, but no more for now......Actually, the new society is developing faster than I anticipated at least for two groups of people.  As for concentrating on some characters etc, Kaid has featured more heavily in the last 3 novels than Kusac, so the new one, STRONGHOLD RISING, will be Kusac's.  I moved away from Carrie and Kusac purposely, as when two folk have a happy relationship, then it's more difficult to write about them as you need tensions as well as adventures for good stories.  DARK NADIR gave me the opportunity to create those tensions within their triad and this is part of what I'll be exploring in STRONGHOLD RISING, the novel I'm working on now.

DE:   Thanks so much, Lisanne!  Any last words?

LN:   I am now to be one of the Guest of Honor at the major annual British SF Con in Blackpool-called Paragon-in 2001, and am in Berlin at a small con called EuroFurence 5 at the end of July this year.  Details of both on my web pages.  And I have a newsgroup at http://www.sff.net/people/Lisanne/newsgroup  or www.sff.net  and follow the links for newsgroups

This interview was conducted and written by Debra Euler and re printed with the permisson of DAW Books.

Lisanne is currently working on the 7th in the series, called BETWEEN DARKNESS AND LIGHT. She also has 3 short stories in print in the DAW anthologies called BATTLE MAGIC, MERLIN and SPELL FANTASTIC.

Want to find out more about the books?  Then click on the link below to reach her own pages.

The Sholan Alliance Homepage

If you have any suggestions, requests or hints, please contact the webmaster. This also includes spelling and grammar mistakes :)