Pop quiz! You’ve got a fic that revolves around a secret identity. Do you create an inlay or a cutout on the cover?

Luckily, I had a ton of photomanips to pick from for the cutout portion – nearly every chapter included a graphic or two. Which led to another design question: while typesetting the fic, did I want to sprinkle the graphics throughout like I’ve done with fanart in the past, or collect them all in one place?

The graphics were part of the summaries and/or author’s notes, and they weren’t always chapter-specific; plus, they occasionally had their own captions that worked great on AO3, but might’ve interrupted the flow of the story in a typical book. So I decided to go with the latter and create a “bonus materials” section that included the graphics, some info about outtakes/side chapters, and the chapter-by-chapter author’s notes.

You can read “The Crimson Lotus” at the link above!