I spend almost as much of my time on cover design as I do writing. And I enjoy it nearly as much. The design for the cover of Child of an Elfin Sea began when I ran across a watercolor mermaid by the same artist who did the watercolor that appeared on my Short Story Outsider .
After thinking about ways to build a cover from the image, I decided that the image was too busy as it was. So, I extracted the mermaid from the background.
For a background, I look for an image that can cover the entire book. That way, I’m not left with a line on either edge of the spine.