Your story definitely deserves far more attention than it has gotten. Although it feels "wrong" to us authors, a nice piece of cover art to show up in the thumbnail makes a difference here. If you aren't much of an artist yourself, there are lots of sites available with art licensed under creative commons, which can be used for stuff like this, although it is recommended to credit it here on Steemit even when license doesn't require it.
Yeah, this is my first post so I'm not even sure how images work with this. Do you just have to include the image in the text of the story for it to be thumbnailed? What if you have more than one image?
Yes, with the regular steemit editor, you can drag and drop them or hit "selecting them" in the bottom of the text field. The editor generates the markdown necessary automatically. But do be sure you credit art.
thanks for the tip :)