Bond, James Bond and the PERMANENT FATAL ERROR connection

The tram returning to downtown Gatlinburg.

These pictures are of the alpine tram that connects downtown Gatlinburg to Ober, Gatlinburg—an entertainment and ski complex high atop the Smoky Mountains.

One of my earliest, fondest childhood movie memories is watching an old James Bond movie with my father, “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service,” the first non-Sean Connery 007 film. It was during one of those holiday Bond marathons that seem to come around every Thanksgiving, and I ate it up with all the turkey and pies, etc. The fact we saw it in the Smokys made it even better—but we’ll get to that.

There comes a point when Bond is taken to his arch-enemy Blofeld’s latest remote hideout (the poor, evil man having lost his last one, a spiffy base tucked inside a Japanese volcano in the enticingly titled “You Only Live Twice”!). 

The head of SPECTRE’S latest pad in OHMSS is high atop a piz that can only be arrived at by tram. (Bond escapes back down the mountainside on skis—one of the best scenes in any Bond movie, IMHO, and also a wonderfully-written chapter in Ian Fleming’s original novel.)

To make his escape, Bond first has to travel hand-over-hand down the tram’s cable while it is coming up the other way. He does this in blinding snow flurries and in street clothes, using only the torn-out linings of his pockets to protect his hands from the slick, thick and oily cable that suspends the car. Loss of fingers and hands is a real risk.

Blofeld's Alpine lair in "On Her Majesty's Secret Service."

I get chills (in every sense) every time I watch that movie, and particularly, that scene. The idea of a place so remote that it could only be reached by such a conveyance haunted younger me.

In my novel, PERMANENT FATAL ERROR, I had to have my heroine, Ashley McKnight, travel to my “villain’s” lair in just such a tram, which fortunately exists in my present home in the Smoky Mountains.

When the time comes for Ashley to leave the mountain—and to do so under great threat—she does so by traveling down the Crockett Mountain ski lift, but under less than terrific circumstances…

The lift up Crockett Mountain from downtown Gatlinburg.

AND JUST LIKE THAT, WE HAVE A COVER FOR PERMANENT FATAL ERROR!

PERMANENT FATAL ERROR: Coming soon from Betimes Books

My novel, Permanent Fatal Error, will be published by Betimes Books later this year.

This is the primary place I'll be talking more about all that, posting cover art and videos and such, as the publication date draws nearer.

For now, here's the initial publisher's tease for my novel:

A long-missing novelist, a string of murders and a new brand of heroine fire Permanent Fatal Error, a literary thriller.

Everett Hyde: Cult-writer extraordinaire, once regarded as the voice of his generation; an author in the reclusive tradition of J.D. Salinger and Thomas Pynchon but now presumed dead.

Chase Alger: Award-wining biographer specializing in studies of famous people—writers all—who’ve come to mysterious ends. Chase is a self-made man with his own ambiguous past. When Chase receives an invitation from Everett Hyde’s widow, a disarming offer to write her husband’s sanctioned biography, sinister things begin happening around the would-be biographer.

Chase’s initial replies to Mrs. Hyde’s emails are swiftly returned, marked “Permanent Fatal Error.” Chase senses he’s being watched, his every move shadowed.

Further inquiries after Hyde are first met with stonewalls, then menacing phone calls and emailed death threats.

But the hook is set, and Chase, along with his lover, Ashley, an aspiring young fiction writer, agrees to be taken under extreme security to the remote estate of the mysterious author’s equally reclusive daughter, Shelby Hyde.

As they plumb deeper into Hyde’s twisted personal history, Chase and Ashley are forced to wonder if the famous cult author is truly dead and to ask themselves how much they are prepared to sacrifice in order to disclose Hyde’s story.

Ashley finds herself threatened not just by the cult-author’s mysterious daughter, but also emerging questions regarding Chase’s own murky past.

Permanent Fatal Error is a sexy, Hitchcockian roller-coaster ride from Hadley Colt.