Interview with sci-fi author Jordan Harcourt-Hughes

Sci-fi author Jordan Harcourt-Hughes joins me today to chat about her second novel, Bitroux: High Country.

During her virtual book tour, Jordan will be giving away a $25 Amazon or Barnes and Noble (winner’s choice) gift card to a lucky randomly drawn participant. To be entered for a chance to win, use the form below. To increase your chances of winning, feel free to visit her other tour stops and enter there, too.

Bio:
Jordan Harcourt-Hughes is an abstract painter, writer and communications professional. She’s passionate about all aspects of creativity, life-long learning and personal wellbeing.  Over the last fifteen years she’s led, coached and developed creative professionals across the Asia-Pacific region.

Jordan’s books, studio workshops, courses, coaching and resources are an invitation to explore the rich landscape of creative experiences open to all.

High Country is Jordan’s second novel set in the world of Bitroux.

Welcome, Jordan. Please tell us a little bit about your new release.
If Merouac ever thought his life’s work would culminate in leading the metal workshops of the Transcontinental Railroad Project, he was sorely mistaken.

Now, his true challenge lies in navigating the other-worldly abilities he’s only beginning to understand—abilities that allow him to tune metal to interdimensional frequencies.

While trying to be a guardian to his niece, Evra, he’s realising she may have more to teach him than he ever expected. At the same time, his decision to help an interdimensional race find refuge underground puts him at the centre of an even deeper mystery.

As reality reshapes itself around him, Merouac faces a growing realisation: the world of Ahm is on the brink of a profound transformation, and everything he thought he knew may soon be shattered.

Tell us something about your newest release that is NOT in the blurb.
Merouac, my main character, has a twin sister, Malaena. She was the first one to walk between the walls of the world; the first to really accept her unique gifts and find ways to use them. Merouac has been slower coming to the party in that sense. But there is a reveal in the book that takes him deeper into the mystery of his and his sister’s true origins, going right back to their birth. It’s something that Merouac never saw coming, I’ll say that!

Excerpt from Bitroux: High Country:
The two men were slow moving, graceful, each with a high mohawk of golden straw-like hair, and heavily decorated with neck jewels. The neck-ware was gnarled, twisted, fibrous, fragments of plant stems dried and interwoven with beads and fresh flowers, trussed with other leaves and organic material, and embedded with strange jewels that seemed to glow and fade, changing colours across a spectrum of blues to greens and then back to blues.

Tundra inclined his head, made a small gesture and a bow.

‘He greets you,’ Kii translated. ‘Tundra does not speak very much, and so I’ll translate for him.’

‘How do you know what he wants to say, then?’ Merouac asked.

‘I can see it, or sense it, in the atmosphere,’ Kii explained.

Merouac watched in surprise as the Tundra gestured again, imparting information through the aether which Kii seemed to easily recieve and decipher.

Tundra then eased himself into a crouching position and cleared a patch of grass. He shook his head and determined it would not suit, and looked for a sandy patch. He moved over to another, more suitable, patch of ground and beckoned the other two to join him. He went through the same process of clearing the ground, and then used his fingers to trace lines into the sand. He was silent as he did so, but then looked at Kii expectantly, and Kii nodded.

‘Tundra said you did the right thing with the race that was escaping their imploding planet. They are safe, and they will rest in the core of Ahm now. Tundra was just drawing a map for me, to show me where they are.’

Merouac felt a shock run through him. ‘How does Tundra know about the Helara?’ he asked Kii.

‘There are things that can be seen in the energetic environment. He is able to perceive the place where the Helara now rest. It is under the power grid, deep below Suron. There is a cave network, and catacombs with very deep canyons. Below those canyons, this is where you found a place for the Helara to enter the core of the planet. It was the right thing to do,’ Kii said, translating as he watched Tundra’s fingers work in the sand.

Is your life anything like it was two years ago?
2025 is already looking very different to my life two years ago. 2023 was extremely busy, so I made a point of trying to have a quiet year in 2024. It was a fantastic investment as it allowed me to finish Bitroux: High Country, which has been a big win – getting things across the finishing line is really important to me. It’s something that I hope to get better and better at – because it’s something that many creative people struggle with. We have a hard time putting out creative efforts out there to be judged – but it’s just part of creative life, and you have to accept that it comes with the territory.

Tell us about the year that you lost faith in words.
Yes. It was an important year. It’s really what lies at the core of a lot of my creative work – what is there beyond words, beyond language? Are there other types of language based on energy, and if so, how can we adopt them?

It happened when I was about nineteen years old. I often tell people that I had my mid-life crisis very early on in life. I just came to the conclusion that words could be so easily misused that they didn’t mean that much in the end. I wanted something that couldn’t be manipulated.

I have always hated incongruence – where people say one thing and then do something else. I wanted to find a way of knowing what someone meant, what they truly meant, not just whatever words they felt like using at the time.

It was a lonely time for me, and a heart breaking time for me as well, since I’d always wanted to be a writer. I basically came to the conclusion that words were insufficient, possibly even quite useless. And you could say I went into mourning for a period of time. I stopped writing completely.

But, not all was lost – because I began to paint, and that’s how, in the end, I found my way to a deeper form of creative expression. So, now I paint and write and they both inform my work.

 I still think language as we currently understand it is imperfect. But I figure I can work with what I have, even as I’m trying to figure out the better way!

What advice would you give a new writer just starting out?|
Just start. Find a rhythm. Make sure you enjoy it.  I write first thing in the morning, always in cafes. I love being up at the crack of dawn, watching the world wake up. It’s my happy place, and my favourite part of the day. And that’s why I’ve been able to make a daily routine of it. So, my advice is to do it in a way that makes you excited to show up.

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