Renée Ahdieh spent her first years of childhood growing up in her mother's homeland of Seoul, South Korea.

She enjoyed and later drew inspiration from a variety of authors, such as Paulo Coelho, Isabel Allende, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Rabindranath Tagore, Diana Gabaldon, Naguib Mahfouz, Anne Rice, Salman Rushdie, and Libba Bray.

Ahdieh envisioned a re-imagining of One Thousand and One Nights, which is a famous collection of Middle Eastern and South Asian folktales.

[5] On May 16, 2017, Ahdieh released Flame in the Mist, the first book in a new series with nods to the East Asian stories she loved as a child.

[4] Flame in the Mist features a heroine who disguises herself as a man to defeat a dark clan that attempted to slaughter her just before an arranged marriage.