So that’s what he really looks like?

My vision of main character Alex was always more emotional then physical.  He was solid, dependable, someone to rely on and hang on to. Okay, he was also tall and blondish, but that was about all I knew.

My first cover for Twists of Time (originally published as z2) showed an outline of the man, and I sort of liked the vagueness of this portrayal.

When I decided to rename my books, I needed new covers. Current fashion is to show the characters, so it looked like I had to find someone who could show the world what Alex really looked like. I found a group called Deranged Doctor Design.

I decided to tolerate the model they selected for Alex, even though I wasn’t crazy about him. He really didn’t look like Alex to me, but I felt like I didn’t have a clear idea of what I wanted and if I gave it some time then maybe this one would grow on me.

Lucky for me, my sister disagreed. She didn’t know what Alex looked like either, but she was so positive it wasn’t this that she went to Shutterstock and emailed me photos of several other models.

Okay, it looked like we’d have to find another Alex. Option one she sent was clearly too young, but the other six could work. I went searching for any of them.

Man number four was easy to find, and I asked the fine folks at DDD if we could use him. Back came the new Alex and I knew he was right.

When it came time to create the last cover, we needed Alex to make a second appearance, but not with an identical face. This particular model had dozens of photos to choose from, but unfortunately most of them had one of two expressions. Alex was either grinning, or looking puzzled. (Or both.) And on this cover, we needed Alex to be a bit menacing.

The first attempt worked for me, but I got a lot of push back from others who thought Alex looked sneaky because he was looking away. Well that wasn’t the intent, so I asked DDD to see what they could do. I was pretty pleased with the eye surgery they performed, and when I saw the final product, I knew this was what Alex really looked like.