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// Author's Note 
// Story: What if? 
// by Lynked 
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Hey people, it's Lynked. I imagine a few of you are griping about this, but dammit, I've got stuff to say. So let's start of with this:

The Loyal Brony has been inspired by this fic! Check him out. I've read his idea sheet, and completely approve of it.

Now, to the beef. I've been told a few of you could relate to this story. That's good, in a way. When I wrote this, I had done a bit of thinking on my writing. Pony fics, I thought to myself. These ponyfics had rekindled my love for writing. To be honest, I had actually tried to give up writing. I felt like I was a failure at it. That is, until one day, I thought, What if I give this another shot. And what do you know, that was the same day I discovered ponies. Needless to say, I fell in love with the show.

So I wrote. It was a poor fic, with some fair grammatical errors, and 90% of it was telling, not showing. But something about it sparked a little fire in me. So I wrote another. Then another. And eventually, I made my great Moonlight Sonata, which has been heralded (by a few, but still amazingly) as one of the best OctaviaxVinyl fics out there. It too was telling more than showing. It isn't anymore, of course. I'm still working with it, and I've edited it heavily. But I digress.

It hit me that a story is a big What If. What if Octavia and Vinyl were on a cruise? And what if their relationship was on the rocks? 

So in time, I began using that as my basis for these stories. Not once did I imagine I would get on Equestria Daily, and even further away from that could I imagine I would be featured twice. 

When I wrote this story, I was asking myself, What if I had never found this fandom. What if I had never found this show? Well, I tell you my friends, I would be an unhappy, sulking idiot who was wasting his talent as a writer. And now that I look at it, I realize that my life was so close to being pathetic that it was scary.

So thank you. Thank you bronies, thank you Hasbro, and thank you Faust, EqD, FiMFiction...etc. And thank you all who read this, fave'd it, and liked (and even disliked) it. It means more to me than you could ever know.