Our unbelievable music festival
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Hey there! 👋 I'm Martha Karpoff
I’ve been many things in my life – a good student, a cut-order clerk for a carpet factory, a bartender, a short-order cook at a hospital, a clerk at a quarter horse registry, a fund analyst, and a pension analyst.
In the Philippines i wrote proposals for a Philippine non-profit. One grant was from the Sasagawa Peace Foundation for a village project near Mt. Mayon. Another was from the German development fund to evaluate Farmer’s Centers around the country. In Indonesia, I taught an English language school on a sugar plantation.
In the Philippines, I lived a block away from where the ‘EDSA Revolution’ took place. During another coup attempt there, I saw some old WWII aircraft on their way to bomb the Presidential Place fly overhead. I was in Cebu when a labor strike took place, and the strikers threw flip nails which punctured the tires of the Jeepney I was riding in. I was riding in a boat from Zamboanga to the island of Basilan with a guy who looked just like Pancho Villa, from his handlebar moustache, to his gunbelt over his chest, to the machine gun he was carrying. In Basilan, at the one roach-infested hotel in town, someone dragged a woman down the stairs by her hair. Robbers and police chased each other around the hotel with the police ending up shooting each other.
In Indonesia, I rode across a caldera on a burro to Mt. Bromo, where chickens were being thrown down the volcano as an offering. The chickens would walk back up, and people would throw them back down until they succumbed to the sulfur fumes. Back in the States, I wrapped my car around a tree after sliding off an icy road in the dead of winter on a Native American Reservation. I nearly froze to death, saved only by someone noticing my fingers waving out the window. They had to cut me out of that car
So many things can happen when one is out and about. Many things that are real can top whatever I write in my books, although I’m going to give reality a run for its money with my imagination.
Inspiration, motivation, and journey
Journey. I started watching Netflix during the pandemic. One of the first K-dramas I watched was Man to Man. I was impressed by the Korean actor, Park Hae Jin, but was somewhat disappointed in the ending. I said to myself, I can do better. I found out that I really couldn’t. I didn’t know anything about writing a screenplay. I thought that maybe if I wrote a book first, I could then turn the book into a screenplay. You’ll see in the book Park Hae Jin Does the Kama Sutra or The Sweetest Story Ever Told that I’m trying to fit it in to approximately 16 chapters so it could be made into a K-drama. I don’t think it would make a good K-drama, but it would make a great stage play.
I enjoyed writing the book so much that I’ve written several other books. Each was a very enjoyable experience for me.
Inspiration. So, I guess I’m inspired by good-looking and smart men. I have a hard time relating to women. The things they talk about aren’t as interesting to me.
Motivation. I am motivated by curiosity. Can I pose a seemingly impossible question to myself and then write something to reach the answer in a semi-believable way? I like pushing the limits as to what can happen.
I’ve sort of developed a fascination with sex and how it may lead to greater understanding between a man and a woman as well as touch on the eternal and the universal. Feeling something deeply physically and emotionally can go beyond or combine with the intellect.
Successes and Achievements
In the second grade one of my drawings (with Crayolas) of a cow and barn was exhibited in the Oklahoma Children’s Art Museum for a few years thereafter. Other mundane successes might be a degree in mathematics, or obtaining several grants amounting to millions of dollars for Native Americans. I even got the only grant offered for the entire country the U.S. Federal Government for a library on a reservation.
I’m very proud to have been made an honorary member of the Maasai People in Kenya. My Maasai name is Paranae. There is a Paranae story in the Park Hae Jin Does the Kama Sutra book. The Maasai are a very loving people. The Serengeti and the Maasai Mara are beautiful places to see.
I consider each of my books to be an achievement for me at least. In several of my books, I’ve tried to incorporate a current issue in a portion of the book. In PHJ Does the Kama Sutra, the issue was that older men can have much younger girlfriends and wives, but it’s uncommon for an older woman to have a younger boyfriend. In Two Loves the issue is murder and corporate corruption. In Trust Love, the issue is the war in Ukraine and crazy fans.
Now, A Beautiful Book Tour (BBT) was just a book I wrote between writing two more serious books. It was a rebellion from the K-drama model of no sex—just maybe some handholding in the last episode. So, the lead characters in BBT have sex 2 or 3 times in the first chapter even though they just met. I think readers should count how many times these two have sex throughout the book. I also threw in some scatology. I loved the bathroom scenes. This book is a little wacko.
I did recently write an anti-war short story about a woman in the future who, by breeding and profession, had triplets every two years to be developed into killer soldiers to fight the other side of the planet. I’m also working on a fantasy trilogy.
Whatever. I hope you will enjoy reading my books.
