From a Dream at Sea to the Page: No One Aboard Adds to Emy McGuire’s Breakout Year

Emy McGuire did not plan her debut novel, No One Aboard, in the same way that many debut novelists do. There was no meticulous outlining or careful plotting before she began writing. Instead, her first book arrived like a warning flare.

In the fall of 2022, McGuire was living on a sailboat as part of a grueling, cadet-style study abroad program called Seamester that took her across the Atlantic. One night, after weeks without dreaming at all, she finally slept and dreamed of an empty yacht, the sky orange, the water black and two missing teenagers she somehow knew had vanished from their family’s boat.

“I just knew that was the plot of my next book,” McGuire says. “It was one of my lightning strike moments. I knew this was the book, not only that I was going to write next, but also that this was the book that would get me published.”

That dream became No One Aboard, her debut novel, released December 2 with HarperCollins, a domestic mystery set off the coast of Florida that begins with a luxury yacht found adrift and empty. The novel, described by the publisher as “The White Lotus meets The Last Thing He Told Me,” is a sleek, high-concept story about the Camerons, a billionaire family who disappear at sea while celebrating their children’s graduation.

Set across dual timelines — the family’s final days aboard the yacht and the aftermath of its discovery — the novel asks a deceptively simple question: what is more dangerous to a family, a stormy ocean or each other? It’s a question McGuire is uniquely equipped to ask. She knows the ocean intimately, not as a metaphor, but as a physical presence that demands attention, respect and humility.

“Nothing is as scary as being at sea,” she says. “I always dreamed of the sea, and I was like, ‘I love the ocean. I’m such a good swimmer, and I’m going to be a natural, and I’ll make so many friends,’ and it was awful … I was just terrified, and yeah, it was so hard. I will never be as timid and insecure as I was before I went on the boat.”

That journey didn’t begin as a romantic escape. As a sophomore at the New College of Florida, McGuire was planning to study acting abroad in Dublin when her academic life imploded under the weight of inappropriate mentorship dynamics (“not sexual or romantic, but just very close friendships that should not have been happening”) that left her disillusioned.

Looking for another way to find her sense of purpose, she Googled “study abroad by the beach” and discovered Seamester, a sail-training program in which students serve as working crew.

The reality was brutal. She arrived alone in Italy, hauling a 50-pound duffel bag through a port city with no taxis, sobbing on the sidewalk before strangers helped her find the dock. On the boat, she struggled with panic attacks, fear, seasickness and isolation.

“I am not a natural at anything,” McGuire says. “I’m a homebody, and I had been put on this boat almost against my will by my past self. I was stuck. I couldn’t go home because they did not give refunds.”

But something changed around day 45, which was the exact halfway point of the voyage. Asked to crawl out on the bowsprit to raise a sail she’d never touched before, McGuire did it, terrified and clipped into her safety line. When she came back, she felt a surge of pride that changed everything.

“I realized I could have been doing this the whole time,” she says. “I wish I had learned it earlier, but all the lessons were hard-fought. It completely changed me as a person.” From then on, she volunteered for steering shifts, raised sails, and ultimately was voted first mate by her peers. She notes that the experience did not make her fearless; rather, it made her aware of her fear and capable of dealing with it.

That hard-earned confidence underpins No One Aboard, which she wrote the first three chapters for over Christmas break in 2022 after returning from sea. The book grew alongside another lightning-strike project: The Legend of Anne Bonny, a queer pirate musical inspired by the infamous 18th-century outlaw. McGuire wrote the musical in January 2023 during an independent study period, trading drafts back and forth between novel and stage work, each informing the other.

This summer, The Legend of Anne Bonny made its debut in a small production co-produced by Shifted Lens Theatre Company and Two Cent Lion, which quickly went viral. The musical, which ran from August 23 to September 6 at the People’s Building in Aurora, found an audience hungry for its swaggering, sapphic take on pirate mythology, both in person and through social media videos.

“I felt deeply this could blow up, but I didn’t think it was going to happen this summer with a community theater show,” she admits. “I was blown away. I’m so grateful. I think about it every day. The amount of people who messaged me and told me they connected with it, or that they can’t stop singing it, or that they want to see more from me — it has just been one of the best parts of my adult life. I couldn’t be happier with how it turned out.”

The experience also prepared her, emotionally, for what it means to release a book into the world.

“I’m still nervous, though,” McGuire says. “Anne Bonny was the first time my writing had been digested in any way by the public. I always tell people, ‘I’m a writer,’ and everyone takes my word for it, but now they have to actually read what I’ve written. That’s terrifying. I think it’ll be a good moment of growth when people don’t like it and when people do like it, and all of the above. I’m more scared of people not reading it than of people reading it and disliking it.”

Selling No One Aboard to HarperCollins in September 2024 was the culmination of a lifelong wish…literally. At nine years old, on 11/11/11, she wished to become an author. So, when her agent, Ann Rose, called with the news, McGuire hung up, burst into tears and ran to tell her dad she’d achieved her dream.

Editing the book took another year, multiple rounds and more tears. “Editing is way harder than writing,” she says. “You make this beautiful quilt, and then you take scissors to it.”

The work paid off. Her agent negotiated a two-book deal with HarperCollins, and McGuire has already submitted her second novel, which is set to be published in late 2026.

She’s balancing that with developing a cast album for Anne Bonny, which she plans to record in her own home studio and release in installments, aiming for mid-2026. There’s interest in future productions of the musical, possibly on the East Coast or on a ship, and she’s continuing to write plays for Drama Llama, a New York-based company focused on flexible, inclusive scripts for schools.

For McGuire, the throughline is clear. Whether on the page or the stage, she’s drawn to the sea, to history and to women who claim space in worlds that resist them. “I had always been drawn to the sea, so I’ve written a lot about it, but No One Aboard and The Legend of Anne Bonny are very much the capstone projects of my youth,” McGuire says. “They’ve brought me into adulthood.”

If the past year has proven anything, it’s that this moment is not an endpoint. It’s a launch. The lightning has already struck (more than once), and McGuire is learning how to live with the exposure that follows.

“One of the things my dad always says is to shoot the arrow and then don’t look at the target. Do your best with the process and then don’t even look at the result. If I can manage to stop looking at my Goodreads reviews, maybe I can embody that philosophy,” McGuire says. “It’s exhilarating that it’s getting so big and people are watching my musical and reading my book, but it’s also, like, ‘Wait, come back; get back inside me where you were safe and no one could critique you.’ Oh well, I guess that’s just part of the shift from child to professional, from hobby to professional.”

No One Aboard by Emy McGuire is available for purchase online and in bookstores. Learn more at harpercollins.com.