The Musings & Ponderings of Stella (And Friends)

Image of Crunchytakes.com home page with overlay of founder Michal Dii Carlo
Michela Di Carlo

Meet Crunchytales Founder Michela Di Carlo

Meet Crunchytales founder Michela Di Carlo Crunchytales is an online magazine designed to inspire women over forty to lead playful and fascinating lives. Crunchytales’ confident pledge is “We are on a mission to reset the meaning of middle-age.” If you have not yet checked out CrunchyTales, you are in for a treat. Take a look at its vivid visuals, terrific interviews, and incisive articles on everything from creativity to travel to food and wine & volunteering.   And

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Grahphic for Top 10 Reasons Women Over 50 Should Write Erotica
Stella Fosse

Top 10 Reasons Women Over 50 Should Write Erotica

Top 10 Reasons Women Over 50 Should Write Erotica Ever since I wrote Aphrodite’s Pen: The Power of Writing Erotica after Midlife, older women who haven’t yet written erotica have asked me to break it down. Effectively, the question is “What’s in it for me?” Here are my top 10 reasons women over 50 should write erotica. 1. Writing erotica is liberating. Anything can happen on the page. When we write, we play master of

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Stella Fosse

Implanted Stories and the Aging of Female Boomers

Once Upon Our Time Implanted Stories and the Aging of Female Boomers Think back for a moment on Snow White and her nameless wicked queen, from 1937; Cinderella and her stepmother, from 1950; Sleeping Beauty and Maleficent, from 1959. What a terrible career path – and more importantly, life path –  we were given as girls: the progression from young/beautiful/passive/good, to old/ugly/strong/bad. Neither of these fixed combinations is something we would stand in line for

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Image for Lioness in Winter: Sheri S. Tepper: A dystopian science fiction theme, with lightning, a waterfall and a stone woman to the right and a lioness to the left side.
Stella Fosse

Lioness in Winter: Sheri S. Tepper

Lioness in Winter: Sheri S. Tepper When I was forty, in the midst of raising children and being a corporate drone, I read Gate to Women’s Country by Sheri S. Tepper. Gate, published in 1988, is an audacious book. I had grown up in the heyday of male-centric post-apocalyptic science fiction. By contrast, Tepper’s novel is fully female-centric. It is set in a dystopian future where women craft uncomfortable solutions to the human dilemmas of

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composite image of jigsaw pieces with hands-on a circle for Starting an Erotic Writing Group blog post
Stella Fosse

Starting an Erotic Writing Group

Starting an Erotic Writing Group I wish that for other groups, they discover within themselves and each other a wild mystery, an untamed imagination.   Billie Berlin Imagine meeting each month with a circle of older women as co-creators, joining together to celebrate our power and creativity. What could be more fun, and more liberating, than that? And there is no reason – none – why you and your friends, and your friends-to-be, should not

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a partially clothed man and woman with a writer's hands on a notebook computer to illustrate the blog Writing Sexy Memoir Scenes
Stella Fosse

Writing Sexy Memoir Scenes

Writing Sexy Memoir Scenes Our memoirs are rich because we have lived full lives. And when we tell our stories, erotic life is an integral part. Chances are, there have been sexual events in your life that changed who you were, that altered your trajectory. Sex may have been a catalyst for you and your story. If so, it is important to capture that. If, like most of us, you remember your life as part

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