Yes, Season 3

The Fifteenth Witch: Literature From Page to Screen: Yes, Season 3: Mayfair Witches Season 3 AMC/Immortal Universe Just the other day, I was on Facebook, looking at what, exactly, I don't recall as nothi...

Season 3?

The Fifteenth Witch: Literature From Page to Screen: Season 3?: La Parlor's Mayfair Witches Key Fountain So far, there has been no word on whether or not there will be a Season 3 of Mayfair Witches o...

Episode 8 - The Innocents

The Fifteenth Witch: Literature From Page to Screen: Episode 8 - The Innocents: Mayfair Witches S02 E08 AMC Networks Again, get comfortable.  Bring a wedding feast, airline peanuts, whatever you've got.  This is ano...

Episodes 6 & 7 - Michaelmas and A Tangled Web

The Fifteenth Witch: Literature From Page to Screen: Episodes 6 & 7 - Michaelmas and A Tangled Web: Mayfair Witches S02 E06 & 07 AMC Networks This is a long one.  Get comfortable, bring a wedding feast...

A Bit of Review During the Break

The Fifteenth Witch: Literature From Page to Screen: A Bit of Review During the Break: Mayfair Witches in 2 Weeks, AMC While Super Bowl Sunday was in progress in New Orleans, AMC did not air a new episode of Mayfair Witches. ...

Episode 5 - Julien's Victrola

The Fifteenth Witch: Literature From Page to Screen: Episode 5 - Julien's Victrola: Mayfair Witches S02 E05 AMC Networks From IMDb: Rowan demands Julien's help in finding Lasher; Moira probes Cortland's mind for imp...

Episode 4 - Double Helix

The Fifteenth Witch: Literature From Page to Screen: Episode 4 - Double Helix: Mayfair Witches S02 E04 AMC Networks Originally posted Sat, Feb 1, 2025 @ 9:40 am From IMDb: Rowan must find Lasher in order to right her w...

Episode 3 - Cover the Mirrors

The Fifteenth Witch: Literature From Page to Screen: Episode 3 - Cover the Mirrors: Mayfair Witches S02 E03 AMC Networks From IMDb: Rowan desperately partners with Cortland to try to stop Lasher; Moira assists Sip in captur...

Episode 2 - Ten of Swords

The Fifteenth Witch: Literature From Page to Screen: Episode 2 - Ten of Swords: Mayfair Witches S02 E02 AMC Networks From IMDb: Rowan must find Lasher before more people are hurt; Sip finds an ally in an angry Mayfair c...

Episode 1 - Lasher

The Fifteenth Witch: Literature From Page to Screen: Episode 1 - Lasher: Mayfair Witches Season 2 (Image: AMC) Season 2 Premieres From IMDb: Rowan Mayfair is determined to understand what Lasher has become; Sip i...

Mayfair Witches Onscreen

One Month Season 1 Countdown From 2022

(Moved from GoDaddy)

At the top of Chronicles of the Mayfair Witches, you have no doubt seen a countdown timer.  Countdowns seem to be a "thing" these days.  Why?  Dunno.

But I decided to put one up anyway.

The countdown is how much longer until Season 2 of Anne Rice's Mayfair Witches premieres on AMC.  It premieres on January 5, 2025.

I haven't spent much time talking about the series in the last few months because I've been preoccupied with technical details.  And I do mean technical.  Hopefully, the result is all things are functional with nothing functioning in the background that I don't know about.  It's rude.

What I want to focus on now is the pages of the Mayfair Witches Parlor that discuss the AMC series.  You can find them from here, Chronicles of the Mayfair Wtiches, by scrolling to Mayfair Witches From Page to Screen.  The image there, the one of Rowan becoming entangled in the rose vines as if they're reaching out from the wallpaper to entangle her, is one of the promotional images from Season 1.  It's also one of my favorites because it really does illustrate the way the legacy of the Mayfair Witches ensnares Rowan.  

It has been nearly 30 years since I first read these novels, and they left a lasting impression me for several reasons.  The TV series is obviously very new and very recent in this timeline.  It is also being released in a time very different than the ones the books were first published in.  One of the first things that jumped out at me was the confusion over the Garden District house used as the Mayfair Witches house in the novels versus the TV series.  To me, it's basic knowledge that Anne Rice used her own then-home, the Brevard-Rice house at 1239 First Street in New Orleans, as the house Rowan Mayfair inherited from her mother, Deirdre, that she and Michael Curry restore and live in.  When Season 1 first premiered, people commented that the house used in the show, the Soria-Creel house, sure looked like Anne Rice's former home.  

Yes, there are several houses in the Garden District that are built like American townhouses with Greek Revival-Italianate architecture.  Of course, they have the iconic iron lace the porches and galleries of New Orleans are famous for.  Each has its own style, its own colors, and even the basic layouts have their own unique differences.  Depending on where they are, many of the houses have grounds of different sizes.  

In the case of the Brevard-Rice house, one of the features that is fairly unique to it is the fact that the columns along the front of the house are of different styles.  I'll have to go back and check, but I did read once that when the house was being built, Albert Brevard wanted those particular styles of columns because he liked both styles.  Therefore, he decided the columns along the front of his new home would feature both styles.  The end result was, of course, that there are three different styles.

Another architectural tidbit about 1239 First Street is that the library and master bedroom were added later.  Elizabeth Brevard sold the house to Emory Clapp in or about 1869, ten years after her father's death.  It was Emory Clapp who hired the original architects, James Calrow and Charles Pride, to add the library and master bedroom.  Clapp died in Colorado Springs, Colorado in 1880.  Of what, I've not been able to find out, but it's possible he died of tuberculosis, as Colorado Springs was known for its tuberculosis sanitariums beginning around that period.  Emory Clapp and his wife, who remained in the house until her death in 1934, are entombed in Metairie Cemetery, which is where Anne Rice is entombed with her husband and daughter.

If you look at a 1990 first edition hard cover print of The Witching Hour, look at the title pages.  You will see a sketch of the house, which is very clearly the house Anne Rice owned and lived in, 1239 First Street in New Orleans.  The Trade paperback edition of the novel was released in November 1991 and has the same sketch.  I have a Trade paperback copy of the novel from that time with the sketch in it.  The Mass Market edition of the novel was released in May 1993 and features the house on its cover with the lightning around it.  

If that doesn't settle the question of whether or not Anne Rice used her own home as the setting of the Mayfair house that Rowan inherited in her novels, I don't know what will.

Speaking of the novel versus the screen, I began a list of comparisons between specific things in the TV series that were different than the novels.  That list should be on the page of the Parlor that is linked on the page you can find this blog on.  I know--CONFUSING.  It's hard to rebuild a site like mine on today's tools if you're not a business.

Anyway.

I'd intended to rewatch Season 1 so I could complete my list of comparisons.  Christmas is pretty quiet around here, so why not hole up and binge watch...something?  At least, until it's time for the yearly marathon of A Christmas Story...

IWtV Season 2 Finis

The Fifteenth Witch: Literature From Page to Screen: IWtV Season 2 Finis: Episode Art by Immortal Universe * Moved from Come Into My Parlor ...

IWtV Episode 7 Season 2

The Fifteenth Witch: Literature From Page to Screen: IWtV Episode 7 Season 2: Episode Art by Immortal Universe * Moved from Come Into My Parlor ...

IWtV Episode 6 Season 2

The Fifteenth Witch: Literature From Page to Screen: IWtV Episode 6 Season 2: Episode Art by Immortal Universe * Moved from Come Into My Parlor to this blog with the original air date for each episode as these posts we...

IWtV Episode 5 Season 2

The Fifteenth Witch: Literature From Page to Screen: IWtV Episode 5 Season 2: Episode Art by Immortal Universe * Moved from Come Into My Parlor to this blog with the original air date for each episode as these posts we...

IWtV Episode 4 Season 2

The Fifteenth Witch: Literature From Page to Screen: IWtV Episode 4 Season 2: * Moved from Come Into My Parlor to this blog with the original air date for each episode as these posts were made at the time. Episode Art ...

The Pink Room: The Master Bedroom

This is REALLY pink everywhere!  Hopefully, I will soon be able to reduce the amount of pink in the master bedroom.  In the meantime, this is the first room on the second floor I've worked on.  Quite a lot of progress on the room has been made already...

The Mayfair Witches in 3D

 

Now that I've been able to build (for the most part) a 3D model of the Mayfair house with interiors that can be shown even while the entire house is incomplete, I'm turning more attention to...the Mayfair Witches themselves! 

I've included this image and some details about its creation on both Come Into My Parlor In 3D and The Face of Come Into My Parlor's Mayfair Witches.  I am working on some other models of the Mayfair Witches alongside the ongoing 1239 First Street in 3D project.  From what I can tell, it looks like the Witches themselves are what people really want to see.  I can't disagree with that!

That is my ultimate goal--to create the Mayfair Witches as Anne Rice described them.  As we begin to look toward a possible Season 2 of Anne Rice's Mayfair Witches on AMC (actual status unknown), I am reminded that reactions to Season 1 were most definitely mixed.  People either really loved it or really hated it.  Some of the most important main characters were missing completely, there were jumps from one plot line to another that made no sense, among other things.  Most of all, there was a diversion from the source material (the novels themselves) that was too much of a diversion and made people ask a number of times, "Did the writers even READ the books?!"

To be fair, The Witching Hour is a long book.  It's challenging to bring a book so long with four different parts to it to the screen, even as a television series.  There is so much material there that I would imagine it's hard to determine what to somehow translate to the screen and what not to.  I don't know; I am not a filmmaker.  

One thing I keep meaning to do is to expand more on the differences between the books and the series so far.  There are some things from the series that I actually loved seeing, because they did give me a new feel for the atmosphere of the settings of the story.  Another was that Suzanne, the village midwife of Donnelaith, Scotland and the first Mayfair Witch, was brought to the screen.  Then, though I was confused about a few details at first, there was the inclusion of the Mayfair Emerald as a literal key.  Which, symbolically speaking, is what the Mayfair Emerald was.

I decided to limit what I included from the series in the model itself.  One thing I did decide to do, since recreating the mural on the walls of the dining room would be a challenge, was to find a suitable panoramic image for the mural.  Also, I would include framed portraits of each of the Mayfair Witches on the walls of the dining room, which is what was done in the AMC series.  

One of the photographs Rowan finds in Ciprien Grieve's cellphone is an old one that appears to have been taken in the 1920's.  Guess who that has to be?  Yes.  Stella.  The novels refer to photos taken of Stella's Roaring Twenties parties in the Mayfair house, including the last party she threw before her murder in the parlor of the house in 1929.  Photos are mentioned again in connection with some pearls and a Victrola once owned by Julien Mayfair.  The photos were also of Stella and others, like Ancient Evelyn as a young woman.

That photo is one you'll no doubt see tucked in somewhere.  The other photos and portraits, such as the ones seen in the opening credits mounted on crumbling walls with twisted branches of the family tree, I think are one of the ways the Mayfair Witches' tale has spanned generations of this family.  Indeed, there is a lot of interest in the Mayfair family tree. 

But let's get back to The Witching Hour.  As stated, it is a long book.  I understand cast members themselves read the books and are longtime fans of Anne Rice.  At the same time, reading a book that long, with so much in it, seems to be something some readers struggle with.  That's not a criticism of them as readers, however.  The book has so much in it that it can be hard to keep the flow of the story in mind while reading.

This might be a bit overdue, but perhaps it's time the Parlor devoted extra space and time to a more detailed discussion of The Witching Hour?  

In fact, I was just reading through parts of it last night when I came across a section I had been meaning to review anyway.  The reason being that I have been working on other parts of the Mayfair house and needed to review details on a few things in it so they will be accurate in the model.  As to what that might be, I'll give you a hint.

It's something that has me doing yet another search to see if I can find architectural details of the second floor of the Mayfair house.  I want to make sure the master bedroom door is in the correct location...

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year from the Parlor!

I've been working on 3D graphics like crazy.  Mostly because I kept having issues, which in turn led to at least one software upgrade and a major cleanup of graphics files.  It's unfortunate that at the moment, I have system limitations that prevent me from creating more of the type of graphics I want to create.  That's a wordy way of saying my laptop is an old fa--older device.

Perhaps I will be able to obtain a more powerful machine that will be able to handle rendering software at some point.  Lumion is one example.  I'm especially anxious to be able to do more because I would love to be able to do even more with 3D models like what is in this animation:

This animation also appears on the Parlor's home page.

In it, you see a 3D model of a woman, a Mayfair Witch.  The image created using AI technology of Charlotte Mayfair provided the textures for the face on the 3D model.  It's not perfect, but it's not exactly finished, either.

The emerald key from the AMC series that she is wearing is a 3D model of it that I also made.  You know, I had to actually draw the symbols freestyle in the 3D software, and it was sooo tedious!  I tried to keep the model as close to the one in the series as possible, and I will improve it as I am able to reproduce other details of the key.  

When I make graphics for the Parlor that include the key, more and more, you will see my 3D model of the key in it.  I have another version with slightly different metal textures that might still be seen here and there.  

I think now that I have made as much progress on the model of the Mayfair house as I have, it is time to begin introducing the characters themselves, including Lasher.  His first appearance is the image of Lasher created by Jennifer Harris for MAYFAIR, and his entry has been made via Tante Oscar's phone, which has been moved from Tante Oscar's fridge to the Mayfair fridge.

What a coincidence--that is the spot in the Mayfair house where Lasher first revealed himself to Rowan.  Lasher had shown himself to Rowan the moment her mother, Deirdre, died and again on the flight from San Francisco to New Orleans for Deirdre's funeral.  But the first time Lasher showed himself to Rowan in the Mayfair house was at pretty much the same spot where we see Lasher pop up from Tante Oscar's iPhone...

This is also one of the rare occasions where you will hear notty werds in the Parlor.  For those of you who don't mind the occasional f-bomb, have a look:

Again...Happy New Year, everyone!

The Mayfair Witches Dining Room

As Thanksgiving is near, I thought I would put together an update on the 3D model of the Mayfair house at 1239 First Street focusing on the dining room.  The actual dining room has a panoramic mural that continues along the walls, and in the Lives of the Mayfair Witches, this mural is described as being that of Riverbend Plantation.  This plantation is where the Mayfair Witches settled upon their arrival in Louisiana after having fled Saint-Domingue on the eve of the Haitian Revolution.

Replicating such a mural turned out to be just about impossible, so instead, I found a panorama of a Louisiana bayou.  For some reason, this just made the room "feel" more like the Mayfair Witches' dining room.  In the dining hutch, which is from the 3D model of the Addams house by Demilune, instead of a mirror, I found a rendering of Belle Grove Plantation, which was located in Iberville Parish, Louisiana.  

This is not the dining room of the AMC series, but I did manage to tuck in some of the pomegranate patterned wallpaper in the butlers' pantry, which you get a brief glimpse of.  However, I did put up some framed Mayfair Witches' portraits in this dining room.

The place settings, the dishes and the displays are inspired by Rowan and Michael's exploration of the Mayfair house the day after Deirdre Mayfair's funeral.  I've always loved that tour they took.  Then, there are the candles...