When Daring first decided to write down her adventures, she actually did it because she was almost broke. Sure, she had some of her inheritence left, but it wouldn’t last for very long, not with the constant traveling she was doing. So she figured her life was interesting enough to warrant a story, and wrote what would be the first book of her autobiography. The book was finished relatively quickly and sent to a publisher who loved it but thought that “the adventure story seemed a bit to fantastical for adults, so could she please re-write it to suit a younger audience? Oh, and, she should probaly change the character’s name to not be the authors, or foals might get confused and think it’s real” … …you know what, what the hay, she could barely affort rent for the next month, a foal-adventure story it is! She still wanted to use her real name in the books (some part of her wanted them to still be her stories), so she picked a random name to use as a pseudonym, split the book into three smaller books, and raked in the resulting money.
Having to use an alias when interacting with the public didn’t bother her too much, as she didn’t really interact much with the public. That is, until she started dating Zecora. Not so much initially; Zecora was very private, so they mostly spent time together in her home or roaming the everfree, almost never visiting Ponyville together.
That was, until they had Kinyume. Suddenly she had to go to Ponyville to buy baby supplies, take Kinyume to the hospital for checkups, were expected to go to Pinkie’s “Congrats on being born”/“One-month-iversery”/“First steps” parties she threw for Kinyume etc and etc. So far noone outside of the Princess’s friendgroup knew about her, but she realised that it was only a matter of time before the rest of Ponyville figured out why she always wore cloaks and hats whenever she went somewhere. Normally she’d just shrug and let people know that she was “A.K.Yearling”, and deal with the fans. But… if Rainbow Dash had proven anything, it was that she appparanlty had some quite dedicated fans. Take that + Equestria reaching more and more outside of its borders (thus, eventually haivng to come across stories of an actual real Daring Do) + how many enemies she now had and she came to the realization that if word got out about the author of Daring Do living in Ponyville, Kinyume and Zecora would be in danger.
Hence, this. As far as the majority of ponyville is concerned, she is “Rosen Letters”; a writer who’s dating Zecora and prefers to keep to herself. They’re not sure why she used to wear cloaks and hats (though, some guesses it’s because she was afraid or felt insecure about something), but after Zecora’s and her’s child was born, she eventually stopped and came out of her shell a bit. She now usually wears her pink mane styled into curles, while wearing pretty sun-dresses while out and about; she’d probably make good friends with Rarity, with how much she likes to dress up.
In actuality, Zecora was able to create a mane-dye which doesn’t wash out at all as long as a special schampoo is used, but can otherwise be completely rinsed out with just soap and water. Her cutie-mark is more difficult to hide though, so she has to wear clothes that cover it. Ugh, Kinyume is lucky she’s cute, because Daring really dislikes having to put goop in her mane and wearing restrictive clothes all the time.
If anyone finds out about what stories she’s actually writing, she usually tells them that “A.K.Yearling” is just a persona she uses, because she didn’t want to much attention drawn to herself. They are always very understanding, and keeps “Rosen”‘s secret -that’s one plus of living in Ponyville, they’re used to celebrities.
Anyway, the plan is good, noone suspected anything. The only problem was that baby Kinyume would freak out whenever she saw Daring after she’d started dying her mane. It was fun the first time it happened, but then it was quite demoralising to have your child be afraid of you. Kinyume calmed down after Daring spend a weekend just dying her mane and removing the color over and over again until she finally understood that mom just …sometimes were pink. Eventually she even forgot that her mom had a grey mane, and thought that it was naturally pink.