John co-authored a book with Robert Merrill entitled, “Peckinpah’s Tragic Westerns: A Critical Study,” which was published in 2011. He works, publishes, and gives papers primarily in American film genres: Westerns, crime dramas, science fiction, melodrama, and graphic novels (into film). Simons and Merrill also published an essay, “Mystic River’ as a Tragic Action,” which appeared this fall in “New Essays on Clint Eastwood,” ed. Leonard Engel, U. of Utah Press, 2012. Currently, Simons and Merrill have an article, “Razing Cain with Chandler and Wilder: The Prometheus Myth in ‘Double Indemnity,’” which was published in the December 2014 Texas Studies in Literature and Language.