Blog Post No. 497
Beginning the run up to the 500th post, this week we have guest writer Justin Cantelo, one of the founding members of Adventure Worlds Press, a long time corroborator, and coffee shop companion of mine.
I will admit that when my friend Ben asked me to contribute to his blog, I was a little intimidated. You see I’ve known Ben for over half my life at this point, freaking insane. He is my OG creative partner along side Mr. C. M. Forest. Together we’ve spent many hundreds of hours in the halls of college or in a coffee shop or two talking about the future and what our creative pursuits would look like.
Going through college for journalism together, we found that we could not concentrate on any one form or style of storytelling. We would sit for one creative session and work on ideas for what we hoped would become our very own ‘YouTube’ original content. In the next session he would be working on a multi-volume graphic novel story. Then before podcasts became what they are today we would talk about launching a podcast. Many of these things Ben eventually did try his hand at with like minded talents.
Ben has always reminded me of one of my favourite story tellers for this very thing, that storyteller being, Warren Ellis. In his newsletters and forums, Warren Ellis would always talk about the incredible nature of storytelling in its many retro forms, not limited to the traditional pen and paper, but also shout to the highest mountains the amazing developments in how technology could transform stories. This is Ben through and through.
If you have followed this blog for any length of time you would have seen this side of Ben. He is always lamenting on one form of technology or another. You see Ben has always had his thumb on the technology button, always keen on the newest devices and technological elements that just might add something to the creative bubble.
Along side this he has also always admired and shown great admiration for things of a retro nature when it came to creativity. On one hand he would talk about developing a web-comic of some design (technology) and on the other hand he would start to develop a ‘Zine‘ (retro) where he could showcase his stories but also said Web-comic.
Be it video games, or movies, or audio-books or podcasts or any number of different things related to technology, he has tried his hand at many of these formats. He dabbled in the podcast arena, he’s shared his stories online on his very own website AWP, he’s written many ideas and treatments for potential YouTube-esq video series/movies.
Yet while many of those ideas and content platforms might not have worked out to their fullest potential ‘yet’, with his steady handling of this blog for many years, never missing a beat, each and every Thursday sharing with the world a glimpse of his creative talents, I can say with no regrets I am incredibly humbled to be intimidated by the one thing he put his mind, body and soul into that has stuck. I am awed by his achievement, and as he has often asked me in the past to try my hand at something similar, 500 might just be the push I needed.
Justin Cantelo
Ben Van Dongen 