Spooktober 2025: Ring

Yesterday, the day I was meant to post this one, I had myself a little nervous breakdown. I really wanted to do Spooktober this year, but after 2 days of relatively easy going, I was stumped. At the end of the day, I went to bed feeling like maybe I was going to need to give up on doing this challenge this year.

Then, this morning, I had myself an epiphany. Rather than trying to create a bunch of new things for Spooktober 2025, why not use it as a way to celebrate all the cool things I’ve created for the comic book this year? I’d still create new artwork for each prompt, but I wouldn’t pressure myself to come up with something from scratch. And that was how my submissions for “ring” and “amiss” came about.

For “ring,” I almost immediately thought of Kef—a character from The Blood of Seven Queens #5 who wasn’t supposed to be more than a cameo but then turned into my favorite character in the issue.

Kef sports a septum piercing, a piece of jewelry I’ve tended to avoid in my illustrations until now—mostly because looking at them makes me wince in sympathetic pain. I can’t imagine how much they must hurt, so I end up not wanting to put any of my characters through that. But for someone reason this time, with Kef, it felt like she just needed the nose ring.

This may have something to do with the musician I loosely based Kef on, because I saw her sporting one in a music video once upon a time. That said, I think it might have more to do with the fact that I’m friendly with someone these days who sports their own septum piercing and I’ve realized that my initial discomfort at the piercing has essentially gone away with time—and now I think they can look really cool.