When you’re commissioning a cover for a book, it helps to have a pretty good idea of what you want the cover to look like before you hire the artist. Generally I have at least some idea (although the cover for Detective Daddy and the Puppy’s Outing went through several revisions with the artist), although I freely admit that I could have come up with something better for the cover of Weekend Plans — I like the background and color, but the picture is fairly generic.

Fortunately, for Training the Trainer, I know exactly what I want the cover to look like. And on top of that, I even have images I can give the artist so my vision is realized the way I want it to be.

Here’s the images I’m going to be sending:

What am I going to ask the artist to do with all four of these photos? Well, you’ll just have to wait and see.