One of the small downsides of using a cover designer instead of getting dedicated cover art created is that you’re limited by what’s available in the stock-images catalog your designer uses. Don’t get me wrong: Glendon at Streetlight Graphics is a wizard, and he transforms those stock images into things that their own mothers wouldn’t recognize (you know, if stock images had mothers. Work with me here).

For the first three books we were able to find shots that worked, but for Book 4, we kept...