Dayre grew up in rural
Superior, Nebraska. In an interview with Forbes, Dayre shared, "I grew up in a funeral home in a 2,000-person town. My Dad, Uncle, and Grandpa are all funeral directors. In a small family business that means they do every job: from mowing to painting to sprinklers to driving the monument truck in the cemetery to handling floral arrangements to staffing funerals to the realer, more emotional stuff – moving with thousands of families through transformative experiences like grief and death and celebration of life. As early as grade school I started writing stories about birth and death and religion and spirituality and anatomy and miracles. I didn’t have words for it, but writing was one of my purest connections with higher power. Doing it for a living was the farthest thing from my mind." As a teenager, she enjoyed creative writing and attended screenwriting workshops at the home of
Lew Hunter. She graduated in 2005 with a BFA in English. Her first writing job was as a railroad journalist. Her
pen name is rooted in paternal family names. == Career ==