Novelist and film writer Robert Syd Hopkins is the author of a dozen books, three non-fiction works and nine novels under his own name and the pseudonym Robert Rostand.Prior to full-time writing he taught in Hawaii at both the Kamehameha Schools and the University of Hawaii, later worked in sales management with the international division of the McGraw-Hill publishing company in New York and South America; had a tour under contract to the Peace Corps assessing staff in the Caribbean and Micronesia, and spent two years in London spinning words in one fashion or another for a design and marketing group.Being an American living and working in foreign cultures has had a profound influence on his fiction and non-fiction. The nine novels are all set in foreign locales known first-hand, most often with an American protagonist caught up in the "spirit of place" as British poet Lawrence Durrell called it. Born in California, Hopkins has lived a large part of his adult life beyond the borders of the United States, principally in Brazil, England (and the start of his full-time writing career), Canada (writing episodes for the television series RoboCop and F/X), and France.Three of his novels have been filmed, two from his own screenplays, and he has written original film scripts for Universal Studios and Warners.