Mark Macedonia, author of “Beneath A Crescent Moon,” looks through his book Friday, March 10, at his house in Adams Township. Justin Guido/Butler Eagle

ADAMS TWP — A retired Seneca Valley Intermediate High School history teacher’s expertise came into play in his second published novel that uses an little-known period as a backdrop.

Mark Macedonia’s “Beneath A Crescent Moon” offers a story of love, betrayal and survival during the 16th century Ottoman Empire. The novel, published by Christopher Matthews Publishing, was released Wednesday.

“As a world history teacher, I found this topic sort of glossed over by other educators.” Macedonia said. “Not a lot of students or adults know about the Ottoman Empire.”

He said the empire played a role in European history. For example, the Ottomans closing of the Silk Road, the trade routes that brought goods from the Far East to Europe, led to Christopher Columbus’ voyage to seek an ocean route to China.

Using historical fact, Macedonia said he added the story of Jadran, an 11-year-old Croatian boy taken from his family as part of a “human tax” imposed on Christians in the Balkans by the Ottomans.

Jadran rises through the ranks of the Janissary Corps, an elite military unit that formed the Ottoman Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent’s personal guard.

In the novel, Jadran becomes the military tutor to the sultan’s son, Mustafa, and falls in love with a woman from Suleyman’s harem.

The real-life relationship between Suleyman and his son, Mustafa, ends in tragedy and weaves through the novel.

“It took a tremendous amount of research, some of it about Suleyman the Magnificent and the influences behind the scenes,” Macedonia said.

He said he started writing in the winter of 2019 and finished a year and a half later. He said he set aside an hour each evening after dinner to work on “Beneath a Crescent Moon.”

Reality kept intruding on Macedonia’s historical fiction. He said when he was two-thirds of the way through the book he caught COVID-19 and was hospitalized for a week and spent another two weeks at home on oxygen before he could take up writing again.

Macedonia said he wrote “Crescent” on a computer, which made it easy to make changes, edit and add ideas as they came to him.

“I don’t write from an outline. I have a start and an end, and I create the scenes as they appear,” he said. “It’s almost like I’m reading the book.”

“After I write five chapters, I go back and read from the beginning. This way I can’t lose sight of the connections — where this person came from — linked through the manuscript,” he said.

Eventually, after writing, reading, rewriting and rereading, Macedonia arrived at a final version of “Crescent” at 123,000 words.

Then he had to find a publisher. He was unhappy with the publisher of his first novel because he felt it didn’t do enough to promote it.

Lacking an agent, he said he sent letters to 20 publishers before Christopher Matthews agreed to publish “Crescent.”

But not before at his editor’s request, Macedonia had to trim about 8,000 words from his manuscript.

Still, despite the long process, Macedonia said the publication fulfilled a long-held dream of being an author.

“I always wanted to write. I took a journalism class in high school and wrote for the student newspaper at St. Bonaventure (University), but when I got out there were no journalism jobs,” he said.

After a stint in the food service industry and going back to college for a master’s and teaching degree, he began a 32-year career in the Seneca Valley School District. Macedonia’s retirement last year gave him more time to write.

“Although, the novel has given me a way to continue to teach. I miss the imparting knowledge part,” he said. He noted “Crescent” is dedicated to his wife, Sandy, and the thousands of students who have passed through his classrooms.

He’s already working on his fourth novel, a spy novel set during World War II. A third novel, an murder mystery set in 1977 Pittsburgh, is on the shelf because of legal rights issues to use song lyrics in the novel.

“It’s easier to write now that I have two books published,” Macedonia said. “It tells me I can do it. Half the battle is confidence.”

In the meantime “Beneath A Crescent Moon” is available to order from Amazon, Walmart and Barnes & Noble.

Mark Macedonia’s novel, “Beneath A Crescent Moon,” was published Wednesday, March 15. Macedonia is already at work on another novel that uses his background as a history teacher. Justin Guido/Butler Eagle