Stewart: Camp Cupcake is 'fine'
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) -- With one week down and many more to go, Martha Stewart has written an open letter to fans describing her first seven days in prison.
The facility is "like an old-fashioned college campus -- without the freedom, of course," Stewart says in the letter, posted on her Web site.
In the five-paragraph missive, Stewart described life at the federal prison for women as "pretty much what I anticipated."
She said she was doing fine and that everyone she has met, from prison officials to fellow inmates, was nice.
"I have adjusted and am very busy," wrote Stewart in a posting on www.marthatalks.com.
But Stewart also beseeched supporters, whom she said have sent hundreds of letters in the past week, to stop including gifts and money. Prison rules apparently bar such deliveries and Stewart noted they would have to be returned to their senders.
Instead, she asked gift-givers to make donations to their favorite charities or organizations.
Last Friday, 63-year-old Stewart began serving a five-month prison sentence at a minimum security camp for women located in Alderson, West Virginia.
Stewart and her former stock broker were convicted earlier this year of lying to government investigators during a insider trading probe into some of her personal stock sales.
Although Stewart was allowed to stay out of jail while appealing her conviction, she chose to serve her time now rather than wait the year or two it would take for an appeals court to rule on her case.
Stewart is still pursuing her appeal.
Friday's message was not the only word on Stewart in the past week.
Agents for Stewart were reportedly shopping a book deal on her time behind bars, which industry watchers said could be worth $5 million.
Stewart promised followers that more Web site postings would follow.
According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, inmates can receive an unlimited amount of money from the outside to put into their commissary accounts, but they are limited to spending only $290 a month in the commissary, a prison mini-mart that has snacks, frozen meals and toiletries, including hair coloring.
Prison officials said if Stewart was to receive a very large amount of money from her fans, the difference she did not include in her $290 a month would be changed out to her upon release.