Alyssa Jewell Flowers grew up on an island where she immersed herself in fantasy books, met her husband on an online fantasy game group and transformed her passion for writing to become a fantasy book author, leaving behind an engineering career.

Her A.J. Fantasy Books have been on the USA Today bestselling author list twice and she draws readers from around the world. Flowers wrote 20 books in four series, including the Valkyrie Allegiance, featuring a high school student who beats the system. She has 20,000-some followers in two fan groups.

The South Lyon resident authored 50 self-published books under different pen names. She writes, publishes and markets her books, with some 9,000 sold.

Her Dragonrider Academy series, which is available in English, French and German, is about a high school wallflower who changes her life after she’s invited to a beach party and ends up solving the mystery of her father’s murder.

This year the mother of a four-year-old daughter is planning book signings in Paris and Scotland.

Flowers’s journey into writing began in elementary school, when she penned a poem that was published in a magazine. She went on to win a statewide scholarship for a comic she created and by the time she started college she had written her first book series.

She decided to self-publish, she said, because other publishers were only offering her a 3 percent royalty.

“I was pretty insulted,” Flowers, 37, said. “It’s quite a learning curve. I started with a writing critique group to help me hone my craft. It’s kind of like a college education without a paper at the end.”

Last year she spent more than $200,000 to have her books translated to French, German, Portuguese and Dutch. It was only natural she would choose the fantasy genre because that’s what she reads most.

“One of my first books my mom got me had little angels who went to school and I really loved it,” she said.

Flowers grew up near Key West, Florida on Sugarloaf Key. She met her husband, Hakan Bouman, on a fantasy game platform and they maintained a 10-year relationship before he moved to the United States from The Hague. They met when she was a high school senior.

“Our first date was online at a virtual beach with goblins,” Flowers said. “I got virtually married before we married in real life. It was a long, hard road getting together being continents apart.”

She went on to become a design engineer for Aisin and then Toyota. She has one patent under Toyota but she decided to walk away from the auto industry after a difficult birth experience.

“The traumatic birth left me with two years of physical therapy to repair my fractured pelvis and PTSD,” she said. “That year the books took off to the point I was making more than my engineering job. I’m just glad my daughter is okay. My book writing turned out to be a blessing in disguise because I also have more time to be with her.”