Character spotlight ~ Trish Perry's Sonny Miller & Grig Banks

Today the spotlight shines on... Sonny Miller & Grig Banks


Trish Perry is such a fun writer! Her books are always engaging, full of warmth and sunshine. I'm looking forward to picking up Sunset Beach and heading back to the quirky beach house in San Diego. Enjoy meeting Sonny and Grig and be sure to buy the book and learn their story :)

Over to you, Trish:~


Brief physical description:

Sonny Miller:

Sonny has straight, fairly long, blonde hair and warm brown eyes. When she smiles her cheeks form little peach-colored apples on either side of her perky nose. Her lips are full—the lower a little more so than the upper. She’s 5’5” and athletically slim.

When I created Sonny, I had Mandy Moore in mind.

Grig Banks:

Grig has penetrating blue eyes that are dark rimmed and thick lashed. I would describe his nose as roman, and his lips are full, with a wonderful curve to his upper lip. He has a scar on his cheekbone, which Sonny finds especially attractive. His hair is light sandy-brown, short but with bangs that flop onto his forehead. He looks like the guy in this picture, but his jaw is more angular.

Strengths and weaknesses:

Sonny’s curiosity is both a strength and a weakness. Because she lacks awareness of her personal history, she’s fascinated with the factors that contribute to one’s personality. This has led her to passionately embrace her career of choice, psychological counseling. But her curiosity also creates uncomfortable situations for others at times, because she puts people in positions where they’re forced to unveil things they’d rather keep confidential.

Grig has plenty of strengths. He stays true to his moral commitments rather than ignoring them in moments of passion. He seeks to protect his sister, who has enough weaknesses for both of them. And he tries to be considerate of the wishes of others when making plans. His weakness? He isn’t always successful in the above matters of strength.

Quirk (if any):

Sonny’s always a bit quick to apply her psychological training (which is far from complete) to a given situation. She means well, bless her heart.

Grig’s sister is actually the character with the quirks, and some of them are rather troubling.

Your inspiration for the characters:

When I was in the shower mode of planning—that advance planning that takes place in the shower or the laundry room or the middle of traffic—I knew I wanted to wrap a story around a set of identical twins, one of whom is Sonny’s mother. And for some reason I also considered a younger set of twins, fraternal, who had been adopted from Russia. That’s where Grig came in, but then I changed his relationship with his sister such that he became her older, protective brother.

When I thought about the conflict between the identical twins, Sonny’s role arose, and she became the heroine. I liked the idea of making her interested in Psychology and desirous of using her training to get to the bottom of her whacked-out family origins. Since the format of the beach house books requires the plot to take place within a relatively short time span, I needed to give Sonny and Grig a past together, to explain how they could fall so deeply for each other within one week’s time. Once those parameters were in place, the characters took on their personalities rather easily.

Background to the story:

When I wrote Beach Dreams—the book released before Sunset Beach—I wasn’t aware Harvest House would ask me to write another in the series. I worried just a tad about the fact that I had pretty much used up all of the research I had done on the San Diego area, as far as where characters might be likely to go, what situations they might experience, and such. Did that stop me for one second from saying yessiree to a chance to write another beach house book? Not on your life! So I did more research, talked with more people from the area, and did the above shower thinking (and massive amounts of praying, as usual) until the story of Sonny and her mysterious personal history fell into place.

Thank you very much, Trish! It is always a pleasure to have you visit :)

On Thursday, the spotlight shines on Cheryl McKay & Rene Gutteridge's Jessie Stone from Never the Bride ~ you are going to be surprised!

Relz Reviewz Extras

Review of Beach Dreams

Character spotlight on Beach Dreams' Jeremy & Tiffany

Visit Trish's website

Buy Trish's books at Amazon or Koorong