Empowered Aging with Margie Zable Fisher

The Cabernet Club, released in January 2025, is a novel that follows Debbie Gordon as she seeks big changes and fulfillment in the second half of her life. The book is a light, funny and captivating read that still manages to highlight and explore many of the more serious aspects of the middlescence journey. It is co-authored by the late Rona S. Zable and her daughter, Margie Zable Fisher.

In today’s episode we speak with Margie Zable Fisher about her new book, The Cabernet Club, her mother, writing fiction and Margie’s own middlescence journey. There are so many topics we wanted to delve into with Margie who left her long-time career in PR to become a full-time writer after age 50. Margie (as was her mother) is both a huge proponent, as well as a prime example, of the importance of using your middle age years to create the life you want. Margie introduces the idea of “empowered aging” as she discusses the challenges and successful steps she embarked on when she turned 50.

We hope you find our conversation with Margie as delightful and fascinating as we did.

Some of the many topics we discuss include:

• “The Margie Project” which was a year of intentional experiences when she turned 50 and how it ultimately left her feeling better and more empowered;
• The importance of friendship – especially as we age – along with the idea that being a friend is a skill that we can learn and improve;
• Margie’s loss of her mother, the promise she made to her, and how that changed her life;
• How and why she shifted careers from PR to freelance writing;
• The steps Margie took to learn how to write fiction
• The belief that it is possible to have a happy retirement on a budget;
• The comparisons between Rona Grable and Debbie Gordon, the protagonist of The Cabernet Club.
• The plans for the next two books which will continue with The Cabernet Club characters.