Featured Interview With Joakim Lloyd Raboff
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I’m a Swedish-American writer and visual storyteller. I was raised in Los Angeles but have lived in Sweden for many years — currently based in Malmö, Sweden’s third largest city and close to Copenhagen. I’ve authored over 25 books, including documentary-style projects, travelogues, and humorous explorations like Phobias & Fears and The Aging Man’s Survival Guide.
While I don’t have any pets at the moment, I have had three dogs and one cat. I am a lifelong animal lover and spent a few years of my childhood on a farm in rural Sweden.
I’ve worked as a stand-in for Bruce Willis (Moonlighting) and on several other shows in the 1980s, which is in part why I became so inspired by storytelling.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
Like most kids born in the 1960s, I started reading books series like Cat in the Hat. I wrote my first short story when I was 12 or 13 and after High School, I studied journalism. So, I’ve been writing for most of my life.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
Here are some of my favorite authors. It’s a mixed bag, and I love switching genres.
Stephen King – I admire how King turns everyday situations into psychological minefields, making fear feel both intimate and inevitable.
Toni Morrison – Her language is like poetry wrapped in power — every sentence feels earned and unforgettable.
Frederick Forsyth – His precision and research-driven storytelling taught me the value of detail when crafting suspense and realism.
Isaac Asimov – Asimov’s ability to make vast, abstract ideas accessible continues to influence how I approach complex topics.
Douglas Adams – His mix of cosmic absurdity and razor-sharp satire reminds me to never take the universe — or myself — too seriously.
Haruki Murakami – Murakami’s surreal logic and emotional distance pull me into a world that feels like memory and dream at once.
Margaret Atwood – She balances dystopian terror with dry wit in a way that makes even the bleakest futures feel grippingly human.
George Orwell – Orwell’s clarity and moral urgency have shaped how I think about truth, power, and the weight of words.
Virginia Woolf – Woolf’s interior monologues taught me that introspection can be just as dramatic as action.
Agatha Christie – I love how she mastered misdirection — making you feel clever just before revealing you’ve missed everything.
Ernest Hemingway – His brutal simplicity and emotional restraint remind me how much power there is in what’s not said.
Gabriel García Márquez – His lush, layered prose feels like reading myth and history all at once — utterly transportive.
J.K. Rowling – She built a universe that’s both wildly imaginative and grounded in deeply relatable emotional truths.
Ray Bradbury – Bradbury’s nostalgic yet cautionary tone hits that rare nerve between wonder and warning.
Neil Gaiman – He seamlessly weaves myth, fantasy, and melancholy into stories that feel ancient and freshly imagined.
Salman Rushdie – Rushdie’s fearless language and mythological density always challenge me to think bigger and write bolder.
Kurt Vonnegut – His tragicomic tone is a reminder that absurdity and sorrow are often intertwined — and inseparable.
Leo Tolstoy – Reading Tolstoy feels like standing in front of a vast, emotional fresco of humanity at its most raw and complex.
Franz Kafka – Kafka’s bleak surrealism mirrors the anxiety of modern life in ways that still feel disturbingly accurate.
Joan Didion – Her cool detachment and incisive voice have influenced how I observe, distill, and dissect the world around me.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
Phobias & Fears started as a curiosity — and maybe, if I’m honest, as a bit of self-therapy. I began noticing how many people close to me had very specific fears. Some were classic, like spiders or flying. Others were more unusual — elevators, holes, even birds. The more I talked to friends and family, the clearer it became: fear is everywhere, and it doesn’t always make sense. And strangely, a lot of these phobias seemed to grow stronger with age.
So I decided to dig into it.
This book is a mix of things: part research, part observation, part storytelling. I explore how phobias develop, what’s happening in the brain when fear kicks in, and why certain anxieties latch onto us and refuse to let go. I also look at how fears evolve over time, how culture and upbringing influence what we’re afraid of, and even how animals experience fear.
But it’s not a clinical guide, and it’s definitely not a self-help manual. It’s more like a conversation — the kind you might have with a friend over coffee (or maybe something stronger if you’ve just had a run-in with a clown or a long-haul flight).
I wrote Phobias & Fears because I think it’s important to understand why we feel the way we do, especially when those feelings seem irrational. I hope readers will come away feeling a little more informed, a little less alone, and maybe even a bit amused. Because once you realize how common (and often bizarre) our fears are, they start to feel a lot less scary.
And if nothing else, you’ll learn to keep an eye out for ducks. Just in case.
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