Born in Surrey in the south of England, Janet was educated in Epsom and studied modern languages at the University of Edinburgh. She gained her diploma in librarianship at the Polytechnic of North London and subsequently worked in various roles, such as children's librarian, branch librarian, information officer at a children's charity, librarian in charge of a technical library for consulting engineers, librarian and factotum at a community centre on an island in the South Pacific and adviser to the head librarian at the National Library of the Maldives.Some places where she has lived and worked include Scotland, Surrey, the London Borough of Sutton, Fiji in the South Pacific and the Republic of Maldives in the Indian Ocean. In addition, she had the bounty of serving for six years in Haifa as Acquisitions Librarian at the Bahá'í World Centre Library. She now lives in St Albans, Hertfordshire, with her husband Andrew, but they set off for far-flung destinations whenever possible.