Virtual Book Tour and Giveaway: Call Me Obie by Ateret Haselkorn

Welcome to my stop on the virtual book tour for Call Me Obie by Ateret Haselkorn. This book tour was organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. On my stop, I have an excerpt from the book as well as an intriguing guest post regarding technology by the author. There's also the tour wide giveaway for a chance to win a $25 Amazon or Barnes & Noble gift card. Be sure to visit the other stops on the tour for more content. Enjoy!

--

Title: Call Me Obie

Author: Ateret Haselkorn

Publisher: Liminal Books

Publication Date: November 22nd 2022

Print Length: 268 pages

Genre: Young Adult Science Fiction

~

Fifteen-year-old Obie hates the word “artificial.” It has to be the Most Misunderstood Word of the Year 2100. The media puts it in front of anything. They started with artificial intelligence and now it goes with housing, law enforcement, and in Obie’s case, her heart.

Just because Obie’s vital organ was 3D-printed doesn’t mean that she’s fake. She’s simply misunderstood, especially by Humanists. They think that artificial organ recipients like her are an abomination, and that’s why Obie can’t let anyone know the truth about her heart.

But when Humanists injure her best friend Mateo, Obie needs to step up. She decides to get him a 3D-printed replacement spleen in secret. In order to succeed, she becomes a black-market criminal, a high-tech healer, and an authority on love (or maybe not the last one so much). But what else can she do when organs are sold by Jonas, a blue-eyed genius who can’t stand the system any more than her?

Call Me Obie explores the future of discrimination and the timeless power of empathy and forgiveness, with a few comedic mishaps along the way. It is the tale of one young woman’s coming-of-age in a future where nearly anything is medically possible and society must ask: When technology can modify humans, who gets to decide how?

Goodreads * Amazon * Barnes & Noble *

Book Depository * Books-A-Million *

Bookshop * Booktopia * Half Price Books *

IndieBound * Indigo * Thrift Books

---

EXCERPT:

Now, believe me, bullies can figure out how to get to their targets digitally, but I think that having to go to an in-person school delivers us right into the lion’s den. That’s actually how Mateo and I met, back in the seventh grade. I was gliding along, minding my business in my shiny new hover sneakers—even though I promised my dad that I’d walk for some traditional exercise—when my comm device vibrated with an environmental disturbance alert. It said there was a hazard above me. I looked upwards, scanning the treetops and clouds, and spotted a black, sharp-edged and bird-shaped drone the size of my hand. It flew straight up, reversed direction, and then dove down over and over. As I got closer to it, I heard yelling each time it dropped out of my line of sight. Weird. . . When I got to the school’s quad, I saw a thin, golden-skinned boy about my age running around screaming and waving his hands above his head, doing his best to fend off the attack. The hunting drone kept diving to hit him on the forehead with its beak. Every time the boy was down, as in lying on his stomach and moaning, the drone flew up. And whenever the boy shakily stood, it swooped down and jabbed him again. When I reached him, he was resting face down with his bleeding forehead pressed against his forearms.

“Are you okay?” I asked him.

---

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Ateret Haselkorn writes fiction and poetry. She is the winner of 2014 Annual Palo Alto Weekly Short Story Contest. Her children’s story was published as a finalist in the 2020 “Science Me a Story” contest of the Society of Spanish Researchers in the United Kingdom. Her work has been published in multiple literary and medical journals and can be accessed on her website.

Website * Amazon * Facebook *

Instagram * LinkedIn * Twitter

---

GUEST POST:

- Do you think technology is taking over our lives?

Technology plays a big role in Call Me Obie. It runs Obie’s home. It calls for help when someone is hurt. It even churns and scoops out ice cream on demand.

Obie lives in a futuristic word where mankind works with machines instead against them, for them, or using them as servants. I believe this is the scenario we’ll choose for ourselves in the real world. Obie’s society has permitted technology to be their companion because they understand both technology’s strengths and limitations as well as their own. Her world still exhibits a familiar and tense balance between allowing machines to take over and wanting to avoid them. Yet, in the book, technology doesn’t overtake human lives because the characters have designed their system to protect against that scenario.

Here’s a real-world technology story that inspired part of my novel:

I once observed a surgery that was going to be performed with a surgical robot. The operating room was clean, the patient prepped and under anesthesia, the nurses and technicians gowned and ready. The surgeon sat down at the console that controlled the robot’s arms and hands. And the robot didn’t work. The surgeon pressed the buttons and moved the grips and the robot didn’t respond. The staff rebooted the system, and still nothing, no movement in its arms or hands. So the surgeon switched to manual surgery and the procedure was delayed but successful in the end. Had the robot worked, though, it would have relieved pressure on the surgeon’s body as he operated.

Time and again Obie learns that we can’t let ourselves fully rely on technology, a lesson she may well remember for the rest of her life. I can’t say more without spoiling the story.

---

GIVEAWAY:

Ateret Haselkorn will be awarding a $25 Amazon or Barnes & Noble gift card to a randomly drawn winner via Rafflecopter. Good luck!

(All the Ups and Downs is not responsible for this giveaway, its entries, or the prize. Goddess Fish Promotions and the author assume all responsibility over this giveaway.)

a Rafflecopter giveaway