Janis MacKay is a Scottish children’s author and storyteller. She began writing as a journalist but soon made a change to travelling – she has lived in France, Greece, Israel. She arrived at fiction when she began working with children with learning disabilities and studying speech and drama. Her first novel Magnus Fin and the Ocean Quest was written over five years in the seclusion of northern Scotland, which is why it is no surprise the book is about the sea and its inhabitants. Magnus Fin’s adventures begin when he turns 11 – the age when one is no longer a child but not quite an adult. MacKay’s 2013 novel The Accidental Time Traveller was voted best Scottish children’s book by 38 000 children. In the book, a woman named Agatha Black arrives in today’s world from 1812. As a storyteller, MacKay has performed in schools in Norway and Finland in addition to her native Scotland. When it comes to storytelling, she has highlighted the fact that unlike with the written word, no difference is made here between adult and children’s stories.