Cover-trouble

A big advantage with book loved and pampered by a publishing house is that you have to put little effort into the cover. With Desert Breeze, authors fill out an information sheet to guide the cover artist, and then they get back to you with ideas. It's awesome.

My series Embarkment 2577 never found a publishing home, it's a do-it-yourself thing. I recently published a prequel called Arrival that tells the background story. So far so good. The cover to Arrival came together just fine. I wanted people, but a spaceship and the Earth tells everyone what it is about.

Once I got into the Embarkment theme my brain took it and ran with it. Right now I have a sequel novel and one and a half sequel novellas. They need tweaking and editing and such, but I should be able to get at least one of them out there during this year, before everyone forgets about the series.

The problem is - they need covers. This shouldn't be a big deal since I earn a living as graphic designer, but I'm too close to the project and I nitpick. Nothing seems just right.

As a result, I've spent a lot of time browsing stock photo sites to find inspiration and something that can fit together to make a cover. This means looking through hundreds, if not thousands, of photos with handsome men wearing little to no clothes. Poor me, my life is so difficult, LOL! Problem is, Adam - the hero - would be something of a prude. I need a picture of a man who wears a shirt. You might not think that would be a problem, but it is.

I stumble over my own feet in this process. It goes something like, "No. He doesn't look like Adam. That guy kinda looks like Adam, but he's supposed to have brown eyes. Yes. It is important."

Anyway... While doing this, I stumbled over a picture that would have been perfect for Rhodesia of Conversion. When I made that cover I couldn't find a stock photo of anyone that looked just like her, so I finally settled for a picture of a generic woman who looks nothing like Rhodesia.

Do normal people have these kinds of problems?