Most Interesting People 2015: Kevin P. Keating

Why he's interesting: Keating's debut novel, The Natural Order of Things, was a finalist for the 2013 Los Angeles Times Book Prizes' Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. The St. Ignatius High School graduate set the darkly compelling series of 15 interwoven stories in a familiar place — at a Jesuit all-boys school in a Midwestern industrial city. The novel landed Keating, an adjunct professor at Baldwin Wallace University, Cleveland State University and Lorain County Community College, a book deal with Random House, which will release his second novel, The Captive Condition, in July.

Gory days: While attending night school at Cleveland State, Keating worked as a boilermaker. "I saw plenty of guys who got hurt on the job." But that may not have been his worst job. "I also worked at a rendering plant with all kinds of horrific waste from animals."

Alley cat: Practicing As a writer, Keating draws on his experiences growing up in an era when the city had a decidedly different landscape. "Cleveland was a dark place in the 1970s. My grandfather was a cop, and he knew everybody. We drove through neighborhoods with abandoned warehouses and factories. That's probably why my writing is very atmospheric."

Dark side: Keating began reading Stephen King in seventh grade, and something clicked. "Some people say my stuff is very dark, but a lot of people don't get my sense of humor. I come at life as being fairly tragic, but it's got to be funny as well."

Wild cat: The book struck a nerve with a lot of people from St. Ignatius. "I messed with people's senses of identity and made them uncomfortable."

Heavy pedal: To deal with writer's block, Keating takes long bike rides through the Cleveland Metroparks and the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. "While I'm riding, I dictate ideas into an Apple iPhone mounted on the handlebars. It's very productive."

Big break: Keating's editor at Random House likens The Captive Condition, which chronicles a Midwestern college town steeped in horror, to HBO's True Detective. "It does have the same dark tone and mordantly funny humor. I like to describe it as Madame Bovary had it been written by Edgar Allan Poe."