A new e-mail from the author of Stephany Conners' Naturist diary
The original author of the Stephany Conners' Naturist diary sent us an e-mail about the progress of the Naturist Fiction Archive and the missing chart of Stephany Conners' group
Letters : 2820 Words : 529
Hello everyone,
I am the author of the Stefany Conners diary that was updated daily on the Internet a few years ago. I was in contact with the founder of this website already when my diary was being created, and he was one of the rare persons I confided in.
Back in February of 1999, I had a idea after visiting a few websites, being bored at home: I decided to create a fake diary of a 23 year old woman who discovers that her boyfriend is a naturist.
I simply signed up on a great free webhosting company, IceStorm.net, and posted a fake page. I also chatted a little on netnude.com, trying to waste the time.
I then used mass transit to get to college and I used my palm III to write the diary in the bus going to school and back.
I never planned for the diary to become popular: it was just an experiment at first, but it took a life of it's own. I received hundreds of e-mails per day of teenagers and young adults sending compassion. I received e-mails from older naturists trying to help me.
I never wanted to deceive anyone, but suddently, my hit counter was spinning like crazy ! The last time I checked, I had received over a million hits.
I had no plan on what to write, I just ran with whatever insprired me that morning, sometimes keeping stories I received by e-mail to "relive" them in "my" diary.
But it was doomed to fail. First of all, I wasn't a naturist, and I never became one. I just pretended to be one in my story, so I was bound to hit a wall and stop sounding realistic.
At first, it was easy : nobody had done anything similiar to this on the Internet, so I had the advantage of venturing alone. With time, writer's block started to settle in, and worse, critics from readers such as with the pizza towel incident.
I tried to address the critics in my diary, but it was a relative failure. More and more people stopped believing, but more and more people visited the diary. Some people saw thru the veil and attempted to help at inspiration, but I no longer liked the idea.
But the push to close came when Stefanny was supposed to be at the center. Those that believed in her wanted to meet her in person at her center, and those that weren't sure simply exposed her as a fraud for the unrealistic way I handled the naturist center.
I decided to write again in September, but by then, I had lost my hotmail password and eventually, all my messages.
I don't regret having writen that diary, and I did feel a little regret when it got closed down when IceStorm stopped offering free webhosting, which is why I agreed to let this site re-publish it.