Juanita Lorraine Light, also known as Juanita Sheridan, was born in Oklahoma on November 15, 1906. She had a tumultuous upbringing, with her maternal grandfather being murdered by Pancho Villa and her own father possibly being poisoned by a political rival. After her father's death, Sheridan and her mother toured the American West, and Sheridan often found herself traveling alone from a young age. This self-reliance served her well later in life when she found herself in Los Angeles with an infant son and only two suitcases and five cents to her name. Despite the challenges she faced, Sheridan persevered and became a script girl for $20 a week, eventually sending her son to live with a rich Beverly Hills foster family and heading to Hawaii to begin her writing career.
Sheridan's experiences with hardship and deprivation shaped her writing and influenced the characters and settings in her books. She filled her books with detailed descriptions of luxurious surroundings and characters longing for luxury, such as Louise in "The Chinese Chop." Sheridan's protagonists, Lily and Janice, were familiar with hard times and the challenges of being young women on their own. Sheridan herself had experienced difficult situations, such as being chased around a suite of offices by a boss and waking up to find strange hands reaching for her in the dark. She also claimed to know a murderer who had gotten away with the crime. Despite these experiences, Sheridan rarely used them in her writing, believing that people would not find them believable. Instead, she focused on creating compelling characters and intricate plots that kept readers engaged.