It’s been busy! Some of that was illness; like a lot of people, I got hit hard by the upper respiratory crud that went around during the early spring, and then I was buried (as usual) under composition/orchestration homework.

In this newsletter: Candle Arc status report, a music teaser, a Ninefoxy WIP (text-based interactive fiction), Ninefox Tarot WIP, random hobby endeavors, and what’s next - help me decide!

You can read this newsletter at the online archive without subscribing if you hate having inbox clutter. (Hi, my name is Yoon and I hate inbox clutter. I take fiendish glee in unsubscribing from newsletters; I am only subscribed to 2.3 writing newsletters at this point in time.) Feel free to share with anyone who might be interested!

Candle Arc status report

I have been cleaning up the first minute of production. It’s wild how much some mattes and basic watercolor-vibes color class up the joint! I have the encouragement & help of my advisor at my MFA program as well as other instructors. Mostly it’s “keep your head down and keep animaticking,” with a side of putting aside my pennies so I can afford to hire a sound designer down the road. (Voiceover is all recorded; I’m on the hook for the score.)

If you want to help defray the cost of a sound designer, here’s my Ko-fi. The ballpark cost for a professional for Candle Arc is ~$2,500. (There’s a sound design program at ThinkSpace so I have been in conversation with people who do this professionally!) However, this is self-funded and I’m on the hook for this. I know times are rough everywhere; please don’t feel obligated.

I’m currently hoping to clear the first minute with animatic frames cleaned up to the degree you see in the proof of concept, including voiceover and lip sync. I can’t start scoring this until my final project starts in 2028 (for the purposes of the MFA), but that’s okitty; I need to keep working on production and mixing!

If this goes well, after I survive the MFA (I hope!), I am thinking of slooooowly doing a Ninefox Gambit animatic version for my own joy and entertainment. It will be slow because hand-drawing an animatic even at “loose ink-and-wash style vibe” is a lot of work; it will also be slow as I save to hire voice actors for more voiceover work. (I am not interested in volunteers working for free even on a personal project; that’s not fair to the VAs!) The VAs I hired on Candle Arc are spookily amazing, so it’s up to me to create something that’s worthy of their performances.

Ninefoxy WIP

I signed up for IntroComp (text-based games / interactive fiction)! I last participated, er, literal decades ago (when it was run by Jacqueline). I have a WIP in Inform 7 and an alternate WIP in Inkle Studios’ Ink! It’s Ninefoxy! I can’t share excerpts under IntroComp’s terms but if I manage to cough up the beginning of a text game, you’ll hear about it.

I have also thought about resuscitating the fleet battles card game WIP (I shelved it because of school), solo journaling game or gamebook…

I find myself at a crossroads as to What To Pursue Next, including yeeting social media because life is too short to play whack-a-mole with spammers/bots and/or to sit there getting endlessly marketed at. It’s very chill and I only regret not doing so sooner! I have burned down FaceBook, Bluesky, TwXitter years ago, Dreamwidth, and am contemplating burning down Instagram even though I haven’t been there in months. I talk to my friends directly, whether that’s snail mail, text messages, phone calls, or other. It may not be right for everyone but it’s right for me, and it feels nice!

I have thought about writing a hexarchate sequel or reboot or AU; I have over 100,000 words of disorganized material (although it’s not all in continuity). It’s not the most financially “profitable” use of novel-writing time, but since I am on hiatus from writing to do the MFA, maybe that’s not all bad. There are business reasons why it doesn’t necessarily make sense to go all-in on Moar Ninefoxy Novel-Writing right now - not bad reasons, but I can’t discuss details yet. Sorry to be so vague! Business details are complicated and not to be disclosed. /o\

That said, if you email (yoon@yoonhalee.com) and let me know what you’d most love to see next in this universe, I’d enjoy that! Gamebook with tools so you can write your own adventures? Parser-based interactive fiction? Visual novel with fleet battles or “card-game” minigames? (I have a WIP languishing on my hard drive…) More worldbuilding, more of particular characters, prequel about XYZ, sequel about XYZ? What I’d do if I were following my heart is a reboot AU that’s hard military science fiction, following an abandoned squad of Cheris, Jedao, Mikodez, Kujen, and Khiaz (I did say “AU”) as they work their way up to system-wide fleet battles. There’s a way in which this makes sense I swear, but also, this is me so any claims of “making sense” have to be taken with a gallon of salt. Sorry not sorry! But I’m sitting on a pile of hard sf tactics and logistics scenarios I am pining to write. /o\

completely unrelated endeavors

I went all-in on fiber arts (mostly handweaving and handspinning) because I want to use my hands and feet while I still have functioning hands and feet (peripheral neuropathy, prognosis uncertain). I’ve found the School of SweetGeorgia video courses and community to be a tremendous resource. I have a couple secondhand spinning wheels (my faves are the Louët S90 (out of production) and the Spinolution Mach III with 4A flyer (Mach III’s out of production but the “new” version, still available, is the Monarch); my terrific Pocket Wheel is on loan to a friend) and a few floor looms, with One Last Loom, an Inagaki R-25 kimono loom from Inagaki Kiryou in Japan, due to arrive today!

My collection involves some spendy tools. I decided after burning down my health writing novels for money (including the year I spent in and out of the ER while grimly dragging myself through writing a novel despite being so sick I didn’t leave the house except to go to the doctor and to vote), I was going to… spend some of that money on fiber tools. (Now you also know why I needed to recuperate from writing.)

However! Backstrap weaving (an ancient technology across a lot of cultures) can produce incredibly sophisticated weavings and can be DIY’d affordably (one tutorial; another tutorial; and you can make a heddle out of cardboard!). A hand spindle can also be DIY’d affordably and is better for certain types of spinning (e.g. cotton) than most spinning wheels (tutorial for a CD spindle; tutorial for polymer clay + a chopstick spindle; Jillian Eve’s tutorial).

I’ve been playing Mechwarrrior 5: Mercenaries with my husband, which right now is the Best Game Ever as it follows the storyline and we’ve gotten to the Clan Invasion by Ulric Kerensky and friends. Listen, Joe “courted” me by spoiling the ENTIRE plot of Babylon-5 before I got to watch it as well as the ENTIRE extant plot of BattleTech before I got to read the core tie-in novels. :D My husband claims he doesn’t have a Timber Wolf (Madcat) hoarding problem but I don’t believe him. :grin: There’s an entire chapter of Ninefox Gambit that’s an homage to a sequence from Michael A. Stackpole’s Blood of Kerensky trilogy! (Hint: Phelan Kell, bidding.)

For lagniappe, fellow writer Sophia Babai recommended this five-minute yoga stretch routine by Satvic Yoga. Some of the instruction is in Hindi IIRC but between the visuals and English-language portions, I could follow it fine.

I’ve been ill for a while so I need to ease back in (my usual poison is kundalini yoga by way of Ravi Singh and Ana Brett of Raviana Yoga, although I generally do the DVDs). I’m hoping someday I can resume fencing even if it’s in “chair mode” with bladework only.

music teaser

Speaking of which, attached is a 45-second music mp3 I composed, for your entertainment, hybrid/synth + orchestra; boning up on synths is on my to-do list! Yes, I am trolling in the key of Tchaikovsky. :)