May Sweeps - Day 465

I finished my work early today, and thought I would quickly start editing the bit I recorded last night, sticking it into the first file before I forgot what I was replacing.

Funny how memory works.  

Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In May: 1094

I couldn't find the recording on my Zoom microphone, and after a few minutes' puzzlement, I realized I never did record anything last night, I only planned to.  Whoops.

Push-ups Today: 168
Push-ups In May: 1185

So, instead I decided to try and cobble together some cover art for the story.  First I did a search for "obsidian cane," because a character in the story walks with one.  A couple came up, including this rather upsetting image:

There were pictures of canes with obsidian tops, but none carved out of black rock.  I did a search for "black cane" and got this sort of thing: 

(apparently, this dog is known as a Black Cane Corso)

So then I did a search for "old man with cane," hoping I could find a silhouette or something useful.*  I grabbed an image of an old man standing in front of a train, and made this out of it:

And that's not bad.  With a proper bit of text, I'd consider it absolutely cromulent as cover art.

But Gino turned me onto the website Unsplash not too long ago, so I did the same search ("old man with cane") on that, and among what came up was this image:

I found this to be close to perfect, especially if I cropped it like the image above.  The only thing that made it less than perfect were the sailboats, since he's supposed to be standing by a lake.*  So, I squeezed them out and cropped the image:

Then, I went ahead and made a temporary cover like this:

Again, I think this is totally and completely cromulent, and the me from, oh, a year or two back would've already published the story using it (in fact, I'd have been impressed that it only took me fifteen minutes or so).

But I keep hearing that my cover art is terrible, and (cue sarcasm) I really love hearing that over and over again, so I sent the blank image to Big to put on the title and byline for me, and as soon as I get it back, I'll publish.  Not that it's worth the wait.

Thing is, even a story as lame as "Two Month Retreat" has a couple of things that I like about it (there's one line about a wedding ring that I think works just fine).  And maybe some reader out there will like those things too.  You never know.

Okay, I really need to write something now.  After nearly reaching a thousand words last night, I have to do at least 500 today.

And I failed.

Words Today: 318
Words In May: 6058

*And yes, I'm aware sailboats could be on a lake.  Thank you very much, Mister Data.  Now continue scanning for lifeforms.