Looking for a moving summer read or a whimsical poetic allegory full of digital drawings? The Troublesome Cloud, by Santa Barbara creative and Westmont English and History Professor Ryan Minor, is an exploratory tale of navigating unexpected change, filled with fantasy and detail.<\/p>\n
An author, illustrator, and educator, Minor imagined this story in his twenties, inspired by the visual creations of Tim Burton and Dr. Seuss. After completing graduate school at UCSB and earning his PhD in history, getting married, and having children, Minor returned to his art and began to learn the process of creating digital images on his iPad. These images were the origin of this work but became tangible this past year over his break from teaching in the winter.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe aesthetic I\u2019ve always been drawn to is black and white and dark, but not scary dark,\u201d said Minor. He played with rhymes and wording to create an allegorical piece that is intriguing to all age groups. \u201cI love teaching, writing composition, and I love messing with the idea of genre and form, and breaking that down to its metacognitive ideas. The structure of this work is in four acts, and I labeled them literally like what a four-act story would be, rather than give them names, because I thought, why not?\u201d<\/p>\n
This story is also made from a lens of societal observation and teaching perseverance. \u201cWhen I was writing the dialogue, I wanted it to be something that you read and you either enjoy it, and you get it, or you just don\u2019t get it. \u2026 My dad\u2019s 88, and I shared the book with them, and I shared the book with another person who\u2019s been going through a really rough medical condition, and they both told me the same thing \u2014 the last line about change really resonated with them, and that change happens. Change is a part of life, and you don\u2019t always get to go back to the beginning, but sometimes you can find something that helps you cope with the current situation in a better way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Minor is referring to the ending of the book where the main character learns to adapt to their situation instead of finding an all-encompassing solution. He elaborates, \u201cI\u2019ve wrestled a lot with this idea of unexpected change, and as a historian and thinking about the types of things people have gone through at different points, life can be going and then all of a sudden, something really drastic changes, and you either give in, or you just keep trying to find a solution until something presents itself,\u201d Minor said. Though the book is newly published, the responses to the art so far have been heartwarmingly positive.<\/p>\n
Minor\u2019s teaching of global issues as a humanities professor at Westmont College and personal experience with change and struggle influenced the work. \u201cIn recent years, my focus in teaching, especially modern history, is just that there\u2019s this tendency to become apathetic, and apathy doesn\u2019t do anybody any good. Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with the direction of society at the moment, I think it\u2019s important to hang on to hope and push through regardless. \u2026 I am always looking at the dark, negative things that are happening, but also forcing myself to not lose sight of hope because you just have to have motivation.\u201d When creating the book, Minor was pondering, \u201ceven when you go back to your home, you\u2019re back, but it\u2019s not the same. And you have to cope and deal with where it is at this point.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve always been a creative first. I\u2019ve been writing music and taking photographs and drawing my whole life. So this is also just a creative outlet for fun. Creating is always something I enjoy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Minor encourages other creatives to pursue that project they might be sitting on. \u201cI spent probably 600 hours on the drawings and probably another 200 hours on the dialogue. \u2026 It\u2019s important to understand that things take time, and not feeling like you\u2019re not accomplishing it because you\u2019re not getting it done in a week. \u2026 It\u2019s important to have patience and be kind to yourself when you don\u2019t have as much progress as you\u2019d hoped.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Troublesome Cloud is for sale at Chaucer\u2019s Books and online at bottleconjuror.com\/troublesomecloud<\/a>. Learn more about Ryan Minor at bottleconjuror.com\/about<\/a>.<\/p>\n
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