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So You Want to Write a Novel?: Advice from a Nonagenarian Novice with Carlos E. Cortés
Starts Tuesday, January 20, 2026, from 6:00-8:00 PM. Classes meet alternating Tuesdays from January 20-March 17, 2026.
$150. Register today! https://tinyurl.com/NovelCortes
This workshop intensive consists of advice on how to get started on a novel, drawing on Cortés’s experiences writing and publishing his first novel, Scouts’ Honor, at age 91.
The class has two threads. First, between sessions, participants will read sections of Scouts’ Honor and in class will dissect the writing choices. Second, between sessions participants will write one segment of their novel based on the instructor’s prompt and during that session will read a two-to-four-minute selection in order to get responses from the group.
By the end of the workshop, participants will have completed four segments and have a better idea for completing the structure of their novel-in-progress.
$150. Price includes a copy of Scouts’ Honor, signed by Carlos Cortés. Books may be picked up at the Inlandia Institute office in Riverside, or shipped via USPS Media Mail.
(Already have a signed copy? Use your complimentary copy as a gift, or choose another Inlandia book of same or lesser value.)
Registration is first come, first served. Waiting lists may be implemented once capacity has been reached.
Thank you, and enjoy your Inlandia Writers Crafrtlab workshop!
https://tinyurl.com/NovelCortes
About Scouts’ Honor
Dead bodies hadn’t been all that common at Boy Scout Camp Matulia. Nestled in the rugged, forested, relentlessly hilly southwestern corner of Missouri, it was an accident waiting to happen. Consider the odds. Four hundred and fifty young teenagers arriving every other Monday for a twelve-night camping session. Of course, mishaps occurred. The death of Boy Scout Harry Vincent would wreak havoc on the lives of those who tried to put the death behind them.
Reading Scouts’ Honor is like descending into a Hieronymus Bosch painting that has been repurposed for the mid-twentieth-century United States. The story begins in 1948 with the discovery of a young teenager’s dead body at a Midwestern Boy Scout summer camp. The novel then develops as a raucous coming-of-age story, a perplexing maybe-murder mystery, a carnival of off-beat characters, and a communal cover-up involving, in some cases, reluctant collaborators.
Praise for Scouts’ Honor
Scouts’ Honor is a fascinating look at the culture of teenage boys just after World War Il in the Midwest. Many of us grew up in Carlos’s world, which he portrays in both a disturbing and endearing way. His insights into the American condition are bottomless. – Marc Brenman, When Hate Groups March Down Main Street: Engaging a Community Response
This fast-paced mystery involving four Boy Scouts at summer camp raises thorny ethical questions of contemporary relevance. The scouts’ loyalties to each other collide with truth-telling about the death of one of the four. On my own honor, this is an intelligent, thought-provoking, timely book that you’ll enjoy from start to finish. – Ellen Summerfield, author of Motherwise: an anthology of poems
Carlos E. Cortés is the Edward A. Dickson Emeritus Professor of History at the University of California, Riverside. His books include his memoir, Rose Hill: An Intermarriage before Its Time and an award-winning book of poetry, Fourth Quarter: Reflections of a Cranky Old Man. Cortés served as Cultural Consultant for the Dreamworks film, “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” and received the 2009 NAACP Image Award for being the Creative/Cultural Advisor for Nickelodeon’s “Dora the Explorer” and “Go, Diego, Go!.” He also travels the country performing his one-person autobiographical play, “A Conversation with Alana: One Boy’s Multicultural Rite of Passage.”
