This week we discuss Harry and Meghan's book deal and the trials and tribulations in writing narrative non-fiction. TRF's royal watchers, Brand Manager Anne Sampson and agent Kathryn Willms discuss Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, while our panel discussion features non-fiction writers Timothy Christian (author of the forthcoming Hemingway's Widow), Elaine Dewar (author of the just-released On the Origin of Deadliest Pandemic in 100 Years: An Investigation), and Jonathan Tepper (author of The Myth of Capitalism with Denise Hearn), discussing the art of narrative non-fiction.
This week we discuss Harry and Meghan's book deal and the trials and tribulations in writing narrative non-fiction. TRF's royal watchers, Brand Manager Anne Sampson and agent Kathryn Willms discuss Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, while our panel discussion features non-fiction writers Timothy Christian (author of the forthcoming Hemingway's Widow), Elaine Dewar (author of the just-released On the Origin of Deadliest Pandemic in 100 Years: An Investigation), and Jonathan Tepper (author of The Myth of Capitalism with Denise Hearn), discussing the art of narrative non-fiction.
Hello, and welcome to Episode Six of Agent Provocateur, the final episode of Season One. Thanks so much for staying with us. For those of you who have, I'm Sam Hiyate, founder and CEO of The Rights Factory. Today, Kathryn Willms and Anne Samson go over Harry and Meghan's book deal from earlier in the summer, from an agency point of view, of course,
Kathryn Willms:Is this a blatant move by Harry to disrespect the queen on the Eve of her golden jubilee?
Sam Hiyate:And we have a panel of diverse narrative non-fiction writers talking about how they sold, researched, and publish their books. Harry and Meghan took a page out of the Obamas with both couples getting eight figure deals in a combo of Netflix and Penguin Random House. What does it really mean? Our own Kathryn Willms and Anne Sampson take it all apart for you.
Kathryn Willms:Hello, I'm Kathryn and I'm an associate agent at The Rights Factory. I'm super excited today to be here, to talk about prince Harry's book deal. Now I wouldn't call myself Royal obsessed, but I do love celebrity gossip. And let me tell you loving celebrity gossip at the moment is a tough beat. You have to be up on your bachelorettes, castoffs, your country, music stars, or HGTV people, and just random people having babies. So it's been a relief to get back to the OGs of gossip, dysfunction, snide remarks, leaked stories, and outrageous outfits, the royal family. So here in Canada, we had front row seats for awhile. Harry and Meghan met here. They holed up in Vancouver island after their unconscious or sorry, conscious uncoupling with the royal family, but we may have gotten a little excited and scared them off. So now we're back in the hinterlands and I'm really thrilled to be talking to someone on the ground in the know-- a real live person who lives in England.
Anne Sampson:Hi, I guess I'm the person that lives in England. I'm Anne Sampson, I'm brand manager at The Rights Factory. I'm also a freelance social media manager and a former book publicist. And yeah, and I've been basically a royal watcher since prince William was on the cover of YA Magazine and I think I had that up on my wall in my bedroom. And I'm definitely one of those people that read Finding Freedom, the book that came out last year, the biography that was written about the two of them that may or may not have had their tacit approval. And yeah, I've gotten up to watch every Royal wedding and watch the Oprah interview with bated breath and listen to Prince Harry's interview on the Dax Shepard podcast earlier this year. So, I'm definitely a fan slash watcher of The Royal Family. Yeah. So Kathryn, maybe you could start by giving us an overview. Like what do we know about the book so far? Or what's leaked in the past few weeks, but what's happening with it?
Kathryn Willms:So on July 19th, Penguin Random House announced they would be publishing Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex's memoir and the press release gave us a few more details. So we have a tentative release date of late 2022. It's going to be published in the States, Canada and the UK by Random House and various imprints. And we'll have an audio book at the same time. So details of the contract itself were not provided. Although the press release said that Prince Harry would be donating proceeds to charity. We're also given a brief overview. So this is going to be a definitive account of the experiences, adventures, losses, and life lessons that helped shape Prince Harry, as we know him. And it will also cover his military service, his service to the Crown and becoming a husband and a dad. And there were some adjectives:"intimate and heartfelt,""inspiring and uplifting,""honest and truthful."
Anne Sampson:All of those great brand-- it's like branding, right?,
Kathryn Willms:You know them well, Anne. So since then, some other details have emerged. Page six revealed that the deal was for$20 million and it's for four books by Harry and Meghan. So we have Harry's memoir, a wellness book by Meghan, a philanthropy and leadership book by both of them. And then, I believe we're still unsure about the fourth book. So The Daily Mail speculated that it was the second half of Harry's memoir, and it was only going to be published after the Queen's death, but Harry's lawyers quickly denied that. So more plausibly, it seems like it will be Meghan's memoir. Her children's book, the bench-- Penguin Random House also published that-- is not part of this deal. So some other questions still circulating at the time of this recording: What does donating proceeds mean? How much cash is Harry taking home from this deal? Meghan and Harry have already signed multimillion dollar deals with Spotify and Netflix. But the thing about these deals is often there's not a lot of upfront money, especially on the development end. So book publishing is still one of the rare places where you can get big money in advances and Meghan and Harry have said they want to be financially independent. So maybe this is part of that. Other questions: What's this news in fact, leaked? Page Six apparently got it from a source that wasn't connected to the Sussex's-- oh, that's going to be a tough word. And of course, certain British tabloids want to know: is this a blatant move by Harry to disrespect The Queen on the eve of her golden Jubilee? Jeez, Harry-- and this seems like a good segue. What's your first impressions when you heard the news? What's the reaction been like in the UK?
Anne Sampson:Yeah, I was in the shop yesterday and I feel like the tabloid headlines about them are what you would expect. One tabloid said"Harry's betrayal will haunt Meghan forever." And it was next to another magazine that said"Happy Birthday, Prince George!" And"Charles and Camilla Continue Colorful Tour of Cornwall." So I think the kind of British reaction has been exactly what you would expect it to be, like a lot of snarky media responses. You know,"A book about Harry as written by Meghan"-- type of thing. Of course, Piers Morgan was like spouting off in his column for the Mail Online. He called for The Queen to strip Harry and Meghan of their titles. He was calling the book,"A betrayal too far," accusing them of turning her Majesty's world famous motto of,"Never complain, never explain," into"Always complain, always explain-- never stop whining." So yeah, I think exactly like....
Kathryn Willms:Are we still listening to Piers Morgan? Didn't we just cancel him?
Anne Sampson:I mean he has people that listen to him, so, yeah. And then I guess what I'm hoping or thinking that this memoir is going to cover. He was on the Dax Shepard podcast earlier this year and for anyone that listened to it, it was really interesting. It focused a lot on mental health, and his time in the military, the PTSD after serving in Afghanistan, PTSD after his mother's death. And it was kind of a really interesting, intimate, interview compared to the Oprah interview. So I think we'll see a lot of those kinds of themes from that interview playing out in this book here. and yeah, I think for the other books, with Meghan writing a wellness book for anyone that read her blog, The Tig, back in the day, pre-princess, she wrote a lot about wellness and health and lifestyle. So I think that kind of fits into that niche or something that she's comfortable talking and writing about. And Vanity Fair had reported that the book was going to, or one of the books was going to be about leadership and philanthropy, like you'd mentioned. In which case, I think it's kind of interesting that they went with Random House because Random House did the Michelle Obama book. And so I wouldn't be surprised if we saw them doing kind of like a stadium tour, similar to Michelle Obama. If that book comes out and they are promoting it? What do you think-- you think anything Random House is going to insist has to be in the book? Or, how does that--
Kathryn Willms:I feel like I can answer that in the negative-- in that I don't think they're going to insist on an expose of all the family's dirt. I think we'll just all have to keep watching The Crown for speculations on that. But I do think we'll get the Harry and Megan romance story, he'll address his decision to leave. And I do think we might get some insight into what it's like growing up in the Royal Family. So obviously I want some details about the partying-- get me them Vegas details already, but we'll see what happens there. I'm sure Megan is not ghostwriting the book. There's a ghostwriter and I think that, who it is gives us a little bit of insight too-- so the ghostwriter is J.R. Moehringer, who got a million dollar advance, and apparently he was introduced to the project through a connection with George Clooney. So, writers everywhere-- time to meet George Clooney. But this guy's a huge name. He's ghostwritten books for Andre Agassi and Nike co-founder Phil Knight. And what I think is really interesting about him is that he loves to write about difficult relationships between fathers and sons. And he talked about it in his own best-selling memoir. His father was a DJ and he only heard his voice through the radio. And he talked about it was so frustrating as a little kid, that he'd never had a relationship with them, but he'd sit on the stoop and he would turn the dial and try and connect with his father. And it just k ind o f struck me that that was a bit interesting. And also when he talked about his process when he wrote Andre Agassi's book, who also had issues with his father and he described the process, essentially therapy sessions, where they dug deep about painful incidents and they found patterns and themes. So those anecdotes kind of make me think that we might get more insight into Harry and Charles' relationship, and that it may be a little more raw than we might otherwise expect. And sometimes, it just makes me think, sometimes we think of celebrities using a ghostwriter as kind of a cheat, as a way of not putting themselves out there and not being honest, but I think the opposite can be true as well. And if you're not a writer working with someone who is, can I think, bring deeper truths to light and even let you be more honest, because some one who is, who's an expert at it can really capture those experiences authentically. So I'm kind of interested in that. What do you think? And is Harry writing this book as a kind of therapy session? Or do you think there's some more tangible goals?
Anne Sampson:Well, it's interesting that you mentioned therapy because that was definitely something that he talked about in the Dax Shepard podcast and how Meghan is the one who got him into therapy and how he really recommends therapy now to everyone. So I think there will definitely be some of that in the book. I mean, right in the Oprah interview, they said they were cut off by the Royal Family, after they left. And so obviously, money is something that they need, they want to become financially self-sufficient. But they do have a Netflix deal and they have a Spotify deal. So they don't really need a book deal, in order to survive at this point. But they've said the proceeds are going to charity. There's been some question about that because it didn't say all proceeds are going to charity. It just said,"Proceeds are going to charity." So is that the advance? Is that part of the advance? Is that, you know, just the sales after the advance? Like we don't really know what that means yet. But I think, definitely between Spotify and Netflix, now this publishing deal, they're really building a media empire for themselves. And I'm so interested to know. I feel like there must be a Kevin Feige of the Harry and Meghan cinematic universe, who is like, okay, this is our five-year plan. So this Netflix thing is going to come out in January, and then this podcast is going to come out in February and they must have some sort of five-year plan for how all of this media is going to roll out. And it's kind of interesting. I think, Meghan had said in the Oprah interview that she was everywhere and nowhere at the same time, and I think that's going to continue on with them. They're always going to be everywhere and nowhere at the same time. So they're like, if that's going to happen, then we might as well control the narrative for ourselves. And so I think that's a big part of this book and the interviews that they've been doing. Because they're like, if people are going to talk about us, then we're just going to tell it ourselves, and make some money while we do it.
Kathryn Willms:For sure.
Anne Sampson:But with all that happening, Kathryn, do you think that that means that the market is just going to be oversaturated with them?
Kathryn Willms:I don't think it is yet for sure. You know, I do think, I was thinking obviously, publishers are well aware and I'm sure they want to replicate the resounding successes of the Obama's books, right? That deal's worth$65 million. If it hasn't earned out, it's gotta be close. Michelle sold 14 million copies of Becoming. And so, are Harry and Meghan, the new Barack and Michelle Obama of publishing? Like, not so sure they're quite the same heft as writers or thinkers, but I do think they're certainly capitalizing at the right time and trying to make a good go of it. And I do think there'll definitely be interest in this. You know, I was thinking of the best and worst case scenarios for this book. So best case scenario: it's a best seller, super well-written. And it provides the sort of details and insights that make truly great memoirs powerful. The worst case scenario, it's a best seller and it makes so much money that hopefully Random House can splurge and launch the careers of amazing diverse writers with numbers are much more powerful than this one. So in a way I think the publishing industry that it, I think we might see more books from Meghan and Harry and I think there'll be interest for some time to come.
Anne Sampson:Yeah, I definitely agree with that. Are you going to read it?
Kathryn Willms:Okay. So I will be the 1223rd person with it on hold at the Toronto Public Library,
Anne Sampson:I think, yeah. I'm going to read it-- unless it's Harry doing the audio book-- then I might have to actually listen to him, do it, because I think it'll be interesting to hear his voice telling the story and just where he puts the emphasis on words and how he describes it. Even if it's not necessarily his own words, because i t's a ghost writer, but at least in his own voice. S o.
Kathryn Willms:Maybe you'll be able to tell which part Meghan Markle wrote for him.
Sam Hiyate:Fiction might get the glory and possibly a place in the canon, but nonfiction can get into some urgent and dangerous ideas. To look at the process of pitching and publishing narrative nonfiction, we've convened a special panel. Hello everyone. Today we are talking about narrative nonfiction and we have some great writers, all nonfiction writers, on our panel, starting with Jonathan Tepper, whose book, The Myth of Capitalism is now more vital than ever. It came out a few years ago, but it's still selling like hotcakes. Hi Jonathan.
Jonathan Tepper:Hi Sam.
Sam Hiyate:Good to see you. We have, Elaine Dewar, whose book is coming out any day now. It's got a long title, so I have it in front of me. It's On the Origin of the Deadliest Pandemic in 100 Years: An Investigation. Good to see you, Elaine.
Elaine Dewar:Hi Sam.
Sam Hiyate:And, we have, last but not least Tim Christian, whose book is coming out next year, but it's available for order any time and it's called Hemingway's Widow. Now, Tim, I can't remember if we're changing the subtitle. I'm going to go with that, but, good to see you.
Timothy Christian:Thank you, Sam. Great to see you as well.
Sam Hiyate:I guess the thing about having such a range of non-fiction writers here is I'm going to start a bit about how did the deal come about? I think for each of you it's a little different, but I'd be curious. Did you sell the book on a concept, a proposal, a finished manuscript? And what was that like? Would you do it differently? And here I will start with Jonathan-- why don't we start with you? This is The Myth of Capitalism. Yeah.
Jonathan Tepper:Yes. So the book in terms of selling, it was really, essentially selling an almost finished product at that stage. I think we were half done by the time the book contract got done and part of it was, you know, one that I'd been working on it for quite a bit of time myself. Then also, you know, the hard part for me is the research and putting things together-- the easier part is writing once I know what I want to say. And so I was just writing away while you were pitching it to the publishers. And so by the time I finished the book. It was only a couple months after we'd actually even signed the contract.
Sam Hiyate:So that's the kind of standard way-- is you have the proposal, you write some sample chapters, you pitch it and-- Tim, your situation was a little different in that you had to write or collect the material and write much of it first.
Timothy Christian:Yes, I did. So, the first time we tried on the basis of a book proposal with sample chapters and we didn't get takers. Sam, you remember that painful process quite well.
Sam Hiyate:I think you took it quite well. I was worried I was going to call and not get an answer.
Timothy Christian:But, so then I think that there were a couple of problems that the project wasn't, perhaps as well-defined, as it ought to have been. I'm not a Hemingway scholar. So there's a question about my credibility to write such a book. And I don't think the zeitgeist was quite right for it. I continued to work for another two years. And then we did sell it as a full book. And Sam cleverly decided, we should surf on the popularity, the renewed popularity of Hemingway after the PBS series, that Ken Burns had created, created with, with Novick.
Sam Hiyate:I have to say, just as an agent, I did panic as you and I had talked about,"Oh, we're going to get to Hemingway when it's done." And all of a sudden Ken Burns was there at PBS Hemingway. And then I thought, this is our window. We better get, we better get that manuscript out. It was a little bit panicked in the office that day. And so Elaine, let's talk a bit about this massive book. Like I remember at one point it was supposed to be 150 pages. I'm looking at it now, and it's like closer to 450 pages.
Elaine Dewar:Right. With microscopic size endnotes. You know, this book was totally anomalous. It's part of a series that Dan Wells at Bilblioasis decided to start in his madness. And he called me up in, I think, March of 2020 and said, I'm doing this series. I want you to do a book and I want you to do it on, I think it was pandemic profiteers. The last book I did for him was a business book, and I was really not interested in doing another business book. And besides I was already obsessed with SARS COV-2 and its origin and started clipping and was reading. So I said,"Nope, won't do that. Want to do this? What do you think?" And he said,"I don't know. I've never done science. I don't know." I said,"Well, okay. But here's why it's important." So that was it. That was the whole thing. So we had a deal on the phone.
Sam Hiyate:That's the dream that you have a pitch...
Elaine Dewar:It never happened to me before.
Sam Hiyate:"We got to check on the way."
Elaine Dewar:Well, here's my 10 Minute pitch. Okay. I mean, not written, I didn't write one word, which turned out to be a problem. Because when you do a pitch, you form at least a basic idea of what it is you're going to do and how are you going to do it. And after I said, sure, let's go. I then had a panic attack because figuring out how to do a non-fiction book in the middle of a pandemic was really a daunting prospect. So it was fun, but I don't advise.
Sam Hiyate:So you guys all did different, completely different kinds of research. So Jonathan, your old company was doing financial research. So is that what led you to The Myth of Capitalism, when you realized certain patterns were happening?
Jonathan Tepper:Yeah. So the the book essentially came out of trying to answer a question for myself. I didn't really even know that I was going to write a book. I was very interested in solving or answering a question or a puzzle that had presented itself, which is why were corporate profits so high. And historically they've mean reverted quite a lot, and that has enormous investment implications. And if they don't mean revert, then clearly something's changed in the world. And that also has tremendous implications. And so I didn't know the answer when I started investigating. Really the idea of monopolies being the main reason why, a nd certainly not the only reason. Nothing in the world is monocausal like that, but it's certainly a very important one. It came from the research itself and then, u m, I had done an enormous amount of research. I talked to you about it. And I essentially had, I think about a hundred page outline together by the time I started writing. And it was very, very clear to me how the book was going to be laid out. And so, I knew that I wanted to write this book no matter what. And then it was just really a question of where, what publisher would like it and where would the audience be. But, you know, I was really writing it sort of essentially for myself and my clients. And then I thought that people would find it interesting to read too.
Sam Hiyate:I was a little terrified when we had the first, an early conversation about it. When you said that the ideal kind of state of business for like the Nazis was to have, for that kind of socialist structure was to have two or three companies, not more and I'm I'm thinking, well, this seems like an awful lot like America right now.
Jonathan Tepper:Well, it is true. I think that if you look at the Nazis, they definitely had the cartels. They, you know, the U S, was calling these kinds of companies trusts at the time-- in Europe and Germany, they were called cartels. Now you see this in China where they're very large monopolies effectively. And I think the reason why governments that aren't democratic tend to like these is that, it's much easier to boss, one or two people around, you know, who run a very large company than it is, you know, the sort of thousands of shopkeepers or smaller companies. And so, democracy itself, I think is deeply intertwined with competition. And I think that's why Napoleon said that the UK was essentially a nation of shopkeepers and he said it very pejoratively, but I think that was actually a wonderful compliment to the UK at the time.
Sam Hiyate:Tim, in your case research-- I feel like you probably had the most fun doing research-- It was like, well, Hemingway's in Cuba. I have to go to Cuba. He was in Paris. I need to go to Paris. I feel like it was like this-- maybe I'm wrong-- but I feel like you had this beautiful series of trips around the world that where you got to eat well and live well, but you also dug into the research.
Timothy Christian:Well, yeah, it was a work of love. I felt I had to go to the places that Hemingway and Mary visited or lived in, in order to be able to write authentically about them. There were a lot of funny things that happened. One of the most funny, perhaps, was a trip to London to investigate places that Mary frequented during the second World War. And she actually met Hemingway for the first time in a Greek Cypriot restaurant called The White Tower. So I decided I would retrace the footsteps from her office to The White Tower, which is just off Oxford Street. I arrived at The White Tower and it's now called the house of hope, but it looks the same, but it's now a Chinese restaurant. But I mean, if I hadn't gone there, I wouldn't, I wouldn't have that feeling for the place. And that's how I justified the various trips that I've taken. And I really do feel that given the sort of book I've written, I had to have that familiarity and the f eel for place.
Sam Hiyate:Did you have to dig through a lot of archives, like paper-only archives. Cause I have the feeling that's what you were doing the rest of the time
Timothy Christian:Yeah. The rest of the time, that's what I was doing. Hemingway's papers are held at the JFK library in Boston. Mary's papers are there as well. I visited that library. I spent weeks there. But they also provided me with really thousands of pages of correspondence and journals and diaries and digital files. So I spent-- during COVID I was able to be quite productive because I had, or I have one of the largest libraries of Hemingway material outside of Boston, according to one of their archivists. So, that was very useful. I also went to the New York public library, spent some time there. And, in each of these trips, I don't know how you found your archival work, but the most amazing thing about it is the thrill of discovering things that no one knows about, no one has seen and which really can turn the story, quite dramatically. And I had a few, a few examples of that excitement.
Sam Hiyate:I'm going to leave some of that for people that read, that, buy the book and find out. But I think that brings us to Elaine. So Elaine, you took this project on when the pandemic-- we were already in a lockdown situation-- were you kind of crazy? Were you kind of thinking--
Elaine Dewar:Yeah, I was kind of crazy.
Sam Hiyate:... I'm going to get on a plane and figure this out. I'm just like, as if this pandemic wasn't happening or did you know what you were getting into?
Elaine Dewar:No, I did not. And yes I did. So for example, I'm identifying with Tim because that is how I would normally do a book. I would go, I would interview, I would travel. I would see. And I would immerse myself in other people's circumstances, as well as in libraries and archives. For this one, it became very clear, very quickly that I could not get a single senior scientist to respond. Even by email. They were out of their labs or they were ducking their heads. And at that point I had a panicked phone call with Dan and said,"I don't know how I'm going to do this." And he said,"Okay, how are you going to do this?" So I said."Aha! I have an answer." The virtue of science is that it's published. So if you can't get to a person who doesn't want to talk to you about his work, you just go and pick up what he's published. And in doing that, I gave myself pillars to stand upon and then sort of went forward from that point. So I read a humongous amount of academic publishing, which I don't recommend. But it was very helpful. And, the biggest problem was creating that narrative arc to tell that story, the discovery story that happens not in the usual way, by opening a door and finding a human being to tell you that story. But by crafting that story with my own voice. It was hard.
Sam Hiyate:Publishers are always saying they want both credibility and a platform. How would you guys respond to that? Cause the platform thing is often a chicken or egg kind of thing. Do you guys have any thoughts on that? On credibility versus platform, or both, in your writing? Let's go back to Tim for a sec.
Timothy Christian:In terms of platform. I don't really have a platform. I mean, I have a website and so on, but, we're going to have to figure out how we do this-- how we go forward and publicize this thing.
Sam Hiyate:Yeah. So Elaine about platform. How do you feel about that?
Elaine Dewar:You know, I think it's a waste of time. I do.
Sam Hiyate:A lot of Publishers would not even understand that because all--
Elaine Dewar:I know.
Sam Hiyate:-- they ask me is like, what's the author's platform. Like, this is great that they have this idea, but who are they? Why should we care?
Elaine Dewar:Yeah. My job is to get out there and understand what's going on in reality. And I think the more time you spend on Twitter and Facebook and whatever, the less time you spend thinking, and the more time you spend immersed in a like-minded group, which is not necessarily a good thing. Certainly it's not a good thing for the kind of work I do. And it's also a function of age of me. I'm sure I was never a rapid adapter as you can see from this, but it's distracting and I'm a single-minded kind of gal. I'm out there working my guts out to find out what I'm trying to find out and to write it in the best possible way I can. And I figured it's up to the publisher to get it in front of people. It's not my job. My job is to find the story and tell it.
Jonathan Tepper:I think that's the paradox of the platform. A lot of the greatest writers, or most of them, are not on Twitter, don't tweet. And if you look at the investing world, the reason why I'm no longer, tweeting or spending any time on it is that the people I admire the most as investors are not really on Twitter. They're investing. And so, if you want to do great work, spending your day, engaging with your platforms is not the way to go. So it's-- you know-- in a way, having a platform helps, people who don't know that you've written a book become aware of it, but it will prevent you from writing the next book, or running a fund-- whatever it is that you're doing-- you're not going to be doing it if you're on Twitter all day.
Sam Hiyate:Okay guys. Well, I hope for anybody out there listening and working on a nonfiction book, that they've got some interesting ideas here from Elaine. Thank you so much, Jonathan. Thank you. And Tim, thank you so much.
Timothy Christian:Thank you.
Jonathan Tepper:Thank you.
Elaine Dewar:My pleasure.
Sam Hiyate:Oh my god. So season one is over. Thanks to all of our guests, our producer, Andrew Kaufman. And thank YOU once again for listening in. We will be back in October with season two and hopefully special coverage from the Frankfurt Book Fair-- depending on the pandemic, of course,-- where Canada is the guest of honor.