Something L.A.

by R. Dean Johnson

Hour 37 of the Overtime chapbook series, Something L.A. is the true story of a copywriter intern trying to fake it until he makes it. Weaving the summer of his internship with the follwing year, when the intern has graduated at the height of a recession, Something L.A. chronicles how one man copes with the perceived embarrassment of under-employment. Along the way, the intern writes some catchy headlines, gets to know the moral compromises of advertising, and mingles with a few famous people when he finds his way into a modeling agency party in Hollywood.

An earlier version of this Pushcart Prize nominated work appeared in Hawai'i Pacific Review.

16 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

I haven't been R Dean Johnson my whole life. My parents named me Robert Dean Johnson, Jr. They called me Bobby. Everyone did until high school when I graduated to Bob. It felt mature, so I went with it. Who doesn't like a guy named Bob Johnson? It's a fine name up until the point you think you might want to be a writer.

I didn't know I'd want to become a writer. In fact, I started college at Cal Poly Pomona as an engineering major who wrote stories rather than doing his physics homework, graduated as a business major who wrote really plot-heavy stories about people who didn't like their jobs as business people, and left an ad agency job in Irvine, CA after four years to go back to school and learn more about writing stories. Good ones.

It wasn't until a brief stint in the MFA program at the University of Alabama that I discovered my namesake, The Robert Johnson. The guy whose name is synonymous with the Delta Blues. The guy who may or may not have sold his soul to the Devil at the crossroads and suddenly started doing things with a guitar unlike anyone else. The guy who died young and mysteriously. How can some kid from Anaheim (yes, home to Disneyland) compete with a guy that dangerous? A guy that cool? Well, I can't. And frankly. publishing anything as Bob Johnson sounds about as real to me as John Doe or Anonymous. So, I have two early publications as Robert Johnson, Jr., and the bulk of my work appears under the name, R. Dean Johnson.

I hold an MA in English from Kansas State University (Wildcats, not Jayhawks). After that brief stint at Alabama, I went on to earn an MFA in Creative Writing from Arizona State University (Sun Devils, not Wildcats).

After teaching stops at Prescott College (AZ), Yavapai College (AZ), Cameron University (OK), and Gotham Writers Workshop (NY), I am now an Associate Professor at Eastern Kentucky University where I teach fiction and creative nonfiction in our low res MFA program, Bluegrass Writers Studio.

All that, but I'm still just Bob. The guys on my softball team call me Bob. My undergrad and graduate students call me Bob. My wife, the writer Julie Hensley, calls me Bob. Even my kids (7 and 3) sometimes call me Bob. Pleased to meet you, I'm Bob.