On book covers

As previously indicated here, I have a novel due out hopefully by year end.
Like others, I found the creative process exciting and the editing akin to torture. I knew this would be the case from the onset. I did not anticipate the need to be actively involved in the cover design.

The publisher, Eloquent books, assigned my cover to an artist located in Boca Raton.
While Kurt did not read the book, I supplied him with a brief synopsis.I also suggested that, since the story centered around a therapist and a client, both with hidden emotional baggage, it might be approrpaite to draw profiles of each protagonist facing each other as in treatment. I further suggested that each head include a brain and within the brain a small figure or homunculous, representing unconscipous motivations.
The drawing that Kurt did was striking. Two x-ray heads revealed teeth, upper vertebrtae and brains with homunculi. These were imposed upon a black background. The drawing was excellent and would likely sell books. However the entire effect was sinister, menacing and Stephen Kingish. While the book has some violence, it is not a horror story. I e-mailed Kurt and explained politely that the drawing was great but conveyed the wrong impression. The therapist was, in fact, a kind and caring man. I asked if he could soften the picture to better depict a therapist. Kurt tried again and used a photograph of a very distingushed grey haired, grandfatherly man. Since my own picture will appear on the back cover,
and I cannot, by any stretch of theimagination, compete with Dr. Kindness, again I demurred. One photograph was enough. I waited several weeks and again made a third suggestion. Kurt took it well but must have been growing tired of me and my suggestions. Since the first part of the book depicts the early childhood, education and training of the therapist,I suugested three line drawings of a boy, a young man, and an elderly man, depicting the same person evolving as a therapist. I further suggested a dark, starry sky as background, with a comet and tail in the upper corner. The comet makes sense because of some later developments in the story, which I choose not to reveal here.
I await the third and, God willing, final version of my cover.