For several years, as an up-and-coming author, I had the misfortune of having my new books go on sale on the same day as J.K. Rowling’s latest Harry Potter book. As far the literary world is concerned, on those simultaneous pub dates, nobody else’s books were worthy of comment.

While on a book tour stop in Boston, I was having lunch in a hotel restaurant when a couple came in with two preteen girls who were both carrying copies of the newest Harry Potter tome. During the meal, the girls continued reading their books while their respective parents conducted a relatively private adult conversation. It looked to me as though this was the beginning of a serious relationship for the parents, and I’ve often wondered if they eventually married. If so, the girls’ mutual interest reading and in Harry Potter may well have played an important part in blending that new family.

I was well aware of the Harry Potter books, and although I was curious about them, for a long time I didn’t read any of them. Then 9/11 happened. In early October of 2001, I was supposed to participate in a book festival in Nashville. When it came time to make flight arrangement, planes still weren’t flying, and so Bill and I drove back and forth from Seattle to Nashville.

It turns out that’s a long trip, especially since we drove the long way around—by way of Arizona going and via Spokane on the way back. Part way through Texas, with the car radio’s news still focused totally on the terrorist attacks, we stopped by a Barnes and Noble and bought the audio version of the first Harry Potter book—Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone—recorded on cassette tapes, by the way.

Once we started listening, we were enchanted. While everyone else was still focused on the smoldering Twin Towers, we were learning the rules of Quidditch. That’s the magic of storytelling. It takes you somewhere else. As the miles rolled by, Hogwarts was exactly where we needed to be.

We listened to Harry Potter going and coming. In fact, we sat in a hotel parking lot in Boise, Idaho, to listen the ending of book number four, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the last book in print at the time. What fascinated me about J.K. Rowling’s work was that she didn’t talk down to kids. These were children’s books, yes, but they were written in very sophisticated language, and in each book she consistently drew a firm line between good and evil. That’s what murder mysteries do, too.

During our listening experience, the narrator, Jim Dale, became the voice of Harry Potter for us. As the remaining books were released, we listened to them as well, but by then cassettes were a thing of the past, so we listened on CD’s. Eventually we shared our tapes and CDs with our older granddaughters, but by the time the younger ones came along the CDs and tapes had vanished.

Once our grandson Colt arrived on the scene, Bill and I were snowbirding it. Our daughter had the same cell phone provider we used, and minutes on calls inside the system were free. So while Colt was in kindergarten, even though he was in Washington and we were in Arizona, I began reading the Harry Potter books to him over the phone each night before he fell asleep. That changed when he hit third grade. By then he was able to read them to himself. To this day, sci/fi fantasy remains his favorite brand of reading material.

In the early 2000s I began writing the Ali Reynolds books. At some point in time, Bill suggested that artificial intelligence was an interesting topic, and that maybe I should consider writing about AI. The result of that offhand conversation was a character named Frigg, who made her first appearance in a book called Man Overboard.

Frigg had been created by a wannabe serial killer who wanted to use the AI as his helpmate in planning and carrying out apparent suicides which were in fact murders. When Stu Ramey, manages to bring the killer down Frigg, who somehow has a mind of her own, chose to turn herself over to Stu rather than face destruction.

Ever since, Stu and the other members of Ali’s crew have had a tough time keeping Frigg operating on the right side of the law. Her rehabilitation process has involved adding a certain amount of ethical behavior to Frigg’s deep-learning catalog, and the Harry Potter books were part of that Stu used to accomplish that. It also explains why emergency communications from Frigg are called “Howlers.”

After Man Overboard was published, as a liberal arts major, I expected a certain amount of pushback from the computer science community, but to my surprise, none has been forthcoming. Then this past Sunday, the following headline appeared in the on-line edition of The Seattle Times: Microsoft, UW researchers use Harry Potter to understand AI.

I’m sure the article itself is hidden behind a pay wall, so you probably won’t be able to read it without being a subscriber, and it’s not really required reading. It’s enough for me to know that the article exists, and that computer science has finally caught up with the liberal arts major.

I’m still laughing about that, and I’m guessing Harry Potter and Frigg are, too.