It seems I am gaining followers here every single day.

This invokes an immediate reflex to check out exactly who is following. The numbers of followers who are already published authors, have a book in the hopper—or both—is staggering. And encouraging.

I’ve bought a couple of them, too.

I’m looking forward to the day I can post that crucial avatar—that one critical piece of referential iconography that makes feel I’ve been transformed from a bill—into a law: The book cover.

I’ve sat around, chomping on my plot, setting, conflict, resolution and continuances. But, like any good visionary—I’m starting to hanker for some representative visual canvas upon which to throw my paint.

I’m going to design—at least for now—a book cover for a book that does not yet have a complete existence.

Since Photoshop’s complexities are indecipherable without direct guidance, I did what any good, academically-inclined armchair intellectual borne of classical pedagogy would do.

I went to Youtube.

This technique served me swimmingly when I made my epic fly-fishing film. Even my narration hails the acumen of the “upstart-15-year-olds” that made it possible for this cinematic infidel to skulk the catacombs of Adobe After Effects.

This allowed me to composite a non-existent UH1 Helicopter into my film, giving the impression that I had some big-budget transportation windfall, and got dropped off in the middle of nowhere.

This also allowed me to make it seem like a hostile missile attack had blown up a bridge on the Upper Sacramento River, all while I continue fishing in spite of this annoyance 150 feet away.

I’m not exactly sure I will be the final designer for my own cover, but I will at least wield the conceptual gavel.

I’m actually considering something slightly more radical: There is a musical artist—a fairly well-known-one that also sells paintings from time to time. This individual might actually want to be commissioned for this, once they hear the sum total of the atrocity I’m about to foist on the literary community.

I know it sounds like a pipe-dream. But I’ve managed to have a few of those realized before, so don’t count me out on that.

I’m hoping enough of the writers I’ve mentioned get this far into my little rumination to answer this:

What exactly WAS the process for you—of arriving at a cover you felt cast your book in the appropriate light?