John August has done well with changing genres, too, I think ...

J.J. Abrams started out with a comedy, then did some dramas, then went to TV, and now he's directing Star Trek the movie, another example of someone breaking out of a mold.

But I also remember how Leslie Dixon made a very public point of trying to break into the action genre. But if you track her credits, other than Pay It Forward, you see she's pretty much done comedy.

Pigeonholing isn't a law etched in stone, but it is long-standing practice in Hwood - and something for a writer to be aware of.

Josh Stolberg was in the children's animation ghetto before he broke into comedy features (and he also has a horror flick in production). And then there's Scott Frank, who's done different genres.

But I feel your overall point is valid, and it's part of what motivated me to focus on a blended-speculative fiction niche for my work (so far, a scifi western, a scifi noir and a scifi fantasy, with a scifi horror as my next project). It doesn't hurt that I love the challenge of blending the genres in ways I've never seen before.

I'd be *thrilled* to be pigeon'd as "that guy who writes cool crazy stories that don't fit in just one category".

I wouldn't mind being pigeonholed...as long as it is in the very broad super-genre of speculative fiction.