‘Summer Rental’ Harkens Back to ’90s Slashers and to ‘Mean Girls’
For author Rektok Ross, her latest novel was a chance to play in the slasher genre, while infusing it with some painful experiences from growing up.
Summer Rental is described as Mean Girls meets Scream, and centers on a group of recent high school grads who rent a house on an island for a weekend and find themselves stranded — trapped on the island with a serial killer on the loose.
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The novel, published in June, was partially informed by an experience Ross had as a girl when she was bullied by a former friend group, and then seeing her stepdaughters go through similar situations.
“I’ve always wanted to write kind of like a slasher homage, but with something else was concurrently going on in my personal life,” says Ross, who grew up loving ‘80s and ‘90s slashers such as Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer and Nightmare on Elmstreet. “We talk about bullying, but I don’t think we talk as much about friends turning on each other.”
Ross, whose given name is Liani Kotcher, began her professional career as an intellectual property trial attorney, and started writing on the side, eventually cutting down her hours at her Florida law firm while she completed her 2021 novel Ski Weekend.
Ski Weekend was also her entrée into Hollywood. The book, about six teens trapped in a blizzard and the lengths they will go to survive, is currently in development as a feature from Saw producer Oren Koules and son Miles Koules. She penned the script and is executive producing the project.
She notes with a laugh that the duo initially weren’t sure if she should adapt the script (is it wise to give a first-time author the keys to the screenplay?), but after some convincing, they agreed and she hammered out a first draft over two weeks. “I didn’t leave my room,” Ross says of that marathon writing session.
Before the writers strike, the team was looking to secure a more seasoned screenwriter to join them on their journey, and they plan to resume development on the script when the strike ends.
For Ross, writing books that can translate to film is a goal, and while screenwriters might consult with managers about what is selling in the marketplace and cater their spec scripts accordingly, Ross consults her editor, Amy Tipton, who helps advise on trends in the book space to help inform what Ross puts her energy into.
When it came to Summer Rental, Ross had a particular point of pride after her editor read a first draft, given that Tipton reads a lot of thrillers.
Recalls Ross of that early draft: “She said, ‘I didn’t know if you could write a murder mystery that I wouldn’t be able to guess. But I wasn’t able to guess the killer. It still needs a lot of work, but I couldn’t guess the killer.’”
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