It's like Mongolian barbecue for your eyes....

So, one of the things I'm doing is putting together pieces for electronic distribution. Which is another way of saying "I'm building eBooks." Which is actually pretty awesome -- I can write stories wrapped up in dark sensuality or outright erotic terror one day, then the next go with something involving superheroes winning the day. Then drop back to dark but stick with the spandex set. Then go light, bright horror. (Yes, it exists.) In short, I can write about whatever I want, and then I can publish it.

But to produce an eBook properly means producing an eBook cover.

So I've been slowly teaching myself image manipulation software. I own Photoshop legitimately, due to fortuitous circumstances. And there are stock photo sites, like http://www.123rf.com and http://www.shutterstock.com/. Combine these things, and you can put together some perfectly cool eBook covers in your spare time.

The problem is, it costs money to get the stock photos.

Not a lot, mind. A few bucks. But enough to give one pause. But they're nice and let you collect "Lightboxes" full of photos you might want to buy, letting you run through and select potential cover fodder at your will.

And the pictures are so pretty.

Really, it's amazing what you can find on there. I found one picture of a bemasked dusky woman in red holding a pistol to the head of someone she's clearly making love to, while her other hand is handcuffed to his. His eyes are closed and he looks appropriately chiseled, and it has a sense of the immediate all over it and -- oh look, over there there's a picture of a girl in a corset and trenchcoat who's smoldering at the camera, and off to one side why is that a silhouette of a female gunslinger walking with a rifle? Why I think it is!

So you click and click and click and click and the next thing you know your lightboxes have hundreds of images apiece.

The stock companies are ever so nice, though. They're more than happy to let you subscribe. For two hundred and fifty dollars, you can get a one month subscription that'll let you download twenty-five images a day. That's perfect! I can grab everything I could possibly want over the course of a month -- a happy daily download of the best bits of imagery I can find -- the perfect things for romance or horror or romantic horror, eros of all stripes be it adventure or terror! All with no downside -- seven hundred and fifty images, all just waiting to be made mine!

So what's the problem?

Well... for one thing... it's not particularly likely I'm going to publish seven hundred and fifty ebooks in the next month.

I have to stay on an image diet, at least for now. I can look all I like, but I can only buy when I have a story to attach to it. When something hits big, I'll grab a subscription for a month and grab fodder for a good long time, but until something hits big, I need to watch my pennies.

...but it's hard.