The image of the boy I found after asking for teen boy low angle head and shoulders and getting nothing but bland, smiling youths...but one was interesting enough, so I pulled it up and then clicked on the link to similar images. Those were better, several of which were actually Eastern European guys...but another's expression fit the mark okay enough to dig into. (I'm saving these into my catalogue as I go and have 2 dozen).
Linking to the similar models page led me to a link of brooding guys in the woods, not just of him, so I backtracked and did other images of this model to find city, country and backlighted...but a few were against a brick wall. And his expression was the most interesting. I screen-grabbed a copy of it (with the Shutterstock watermark all over it), removed the wall and cropped it to just his head and shoulders and that was working for me.
So...I went looking for a house. Seeking houses with gable windows didn't work. Seeking houses of the 70s did work. Seeking houses painted white didn't work. Then I remembered a line from Miracle on 34th Street, when John Payne talks about getting married and buying a nice Cape Cod home in the suburbs. So input Cape Cod...and there it was. Full house and in wood instead of brick, like I describe it in the book, but workable.
Cropped that down, laid the boy over it, tried him looking right and left and preferred the former. Tried changing the direction his eyes were looking but a friend told me that makes him look like a serial killer...which it did. So now it's back to the original, and I added a couple of lines as potential scars. I also added a bit of emotion to it.
This sloppy cover is strictly a mockup. I think I need to work on the layout and maybe increase the size of his head in the frame as well as deal with the positioning of the title. If I go with this, I'm licensing the images to get them in much higher resolution, so it will look clean.
Let's see how I feel, tomorrow.
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