Battle at Blue Licks

This exciting sequel to Conflict at Chillicothe brought its own set of challenges. Photos of battle reenactments are never royalty free and rarely easy to legally use on a book cover. While I found several that might have worked on this cover, they all had editorial licenses, which meant I could not use them commercially. Fortunately, the author had personal contact with a reenactor, and he provided us with photos and permission to use them.

Putting a face to Joshua (the main character) on the cover was a tad more complicated. We had neither the budget nor the appropriate model to do a photo shoot, yet finding a stock image of a blond boy with the appropriate pose and expression proved impossible. I finally made use of the Dreamstime forum, and found a photographer willing to take photos of his son until he’d arrived at one that would work for me. The publisher and author complained that he looked like a girl and was too clean, so I dirtied him up in Photoshop.  Unfortunately, the author’s insistence that he wear a hat had to be ignored. The hat would not have worked with the composition of the layout.