John Gregory Betancourt - Early Life

Early Life

Betancourt's father is archaeologist Felipe Pablo "Philip" Betancourt. As a child, John Betancourt spent summers in Greece, especially Crete, where his father worked on the excavation at Pseira. There, in his early years, he developed a love for reading and discovered such diverse writers as Clark Ashton Smith, Michael Moorcock, and Jack Vance through books imported from the United Kingdom. He said of this time, "When I ran out of stories, I made up my own to keep myself entertained. I can trace the impulse to become a writer to age fourteen, when I spent most of a summer writing sequels to classics like Treasure Island."

Betancourt's first published work was a poem, "The Argia," in Space & Time magazine at age 15. At age 16, he made his first professional sale, "Vernon's Dragon," to the anthology 100 Great Fantasy Short-Short Stories, edited by Isaac Asimov, John F. Carr, and Martin H. Greenberg. He began his first-published novel, The Blind Archer, at age 17, finished it at age 18, and sold it to Avon Books at age 19. He graduated from Temple University with a Bachelor of Arts.