Miss Primm, in her other life, is, among other things, a 4-decades-long professional astrologer. I enjoy turning traditional astrology on its head by creating birthcharts for fictional characters. So when Gregory Ashe listed his character Emery Hazard’s birthday, I constructed one for him.
Emery Hazard’s Astrological Chart: What the Stars Say About MM Romance’s Most Complicated Detective
If you read MM romance and you haven’t met Emery Hazard, you’re missing one of the genre’s most compelling and infuriating protagonists. Created by author Gregory Ashe, Hazard is a brilliant, abrasive, emotionally tone-deaf detective whose relationship with his partner John-Henry Somerset is the kind of slow-burn, psychologically complex romance that ruins you for lesser books. He is not easy to love. He is impossible to stop reading about. (So, Gregory, more Emery books, okay?)
When Gregory Ashe generously gave me permission to publish Hazard’s chart, I was delighted. Here’s what I found.
Building the Chart
Ashe gave Hazard the birthdate of April 24, 1984. Since Wahredua is a fictional town modeled after Fulton, Missouri—so says Mr. Internet—I entered Fulton as the birthplace. The trickier part was the birth time, which Ashe understandably never specified.
This is where rectification comes in. Rectification is the process of working backward from known facts about a person’s life to determine a probable birth time. With Hazard, two things stood out immediately. He’s described as a big, physically imposing man—very Taurus rising. And placing Taurus on the ascendant put Uranus in the 8th house of sexuality, which in traditional astrology points toward a non-conventional sexual orientation. That rectification also placed Hazard’s Sun close to the ascendant—which means sunrise. Ancient astrologers used sunrise for the ascendant when birth time was unknown, so that works on multiple levels.
Sunrise on April 24, 1984, in Fulton, Missouri. That’s Emery Hazard’s chart.
The Sun, Mercury, and Venus: Why He’s a Cop
Hazard’s Sun sits in Taurus, the sign of stubborn, determined, methodical persistence. Mercury—the planet of communication and intellect—conjuncts his Sun, lending him the razor-sharp analytical mind Ashe has written so consistently across the series. This man does not miss details. He also does not let things go.
Venus, his planet of values, sits in Aries—within what I’d call a wide orb of that Mercury/Sun combination. Other astrologers might not package them together, but I’m a wide-orb type of gal, and in practice the Aries Venus energy bleeds through everything. Aries is the sign of the warrior. His value system is built around justice, confrontation, and the willingness to fight. Combined with the Taurus Sun and Mercurial intellect, that’s your first point for a career in law enforcement. He didn’t stumble into police work. It’s written in the chart.
The Moon in Aquarius: Mr. Spock Has Entered the Chat
Hazard’s Moon—his emotional center—is in Aquarius. The brilliant astrologer Debbi Kempton-Smith called the Aquarius Moon the Mr. Spock Moon, and if you’ve read even one Hazard and Somerset book, you immediately understand why.
Aquarius Moon natives process emotions intellectually rather than feeling them directly. They’re not cold—they care deeply, often about justice and humanity in the abstract—but they genuinely struggle to read emotional nuance in real time. Ashe has written this with extraordinary consistency. Hazard doesn’t pick up on what people are feeling around him. He analyzes after the fact, often incorrectly, and doubles down when challenged.
His Moon sits in the 11th house of groups and organizations. For all his difficulty with individuals, Hazard needs an institutional structure around him. I was rather hoping he’d hang out his own shingle eventually, but Capricorn on the 10th house cusp—ruled by Saturn, the planet of duty and responsibility—says no. Going it alone would be a terrible slog. He needs the structure even when he’s fighting it. Note: I hadn’t read far enough along the series to when he does that, but will it last? And yes, it is a slog for him.
Jupiter and Neptune in the 9th: His Untapped Future
Here’s where it gets interesting for readers who want to speculate about where Ashe might take the character.
Now, Hazard lacks Somers’ natural glad-handing political ability—that’s not in question. But can Hazard, as a skilled and relentless administrator, uncover institutional corruption? I would read every page of that book. There’s also something delicious about the image of Hazard going to law school, given that Somers’ father always wanted John-Henry to be a lawyer. I can see Somers smiling through that particular reversal the entire way.
Saturn in the 7th: The Heart of the Matter
Last point, and the one that explains everything about Hazard’s relationship history.
Saturn, the planet of duty, responsibility, and hard-earned lessons, sits in his 7th house of relationships. Saturn in the 7th is a genuinely difficult placement. Natives with this position tend to select partners they perceive as either superior or inferior to themselves—better than or less than, with very little genuine equality in between. The relationship becomes a structure rather than a meeting of souls.
The good news—and there is good news—is that Saturn in the 7th is a placement that rewards growth. When these natives get older and wiser and do the work, they learn that a relationship of equals is not only possible but also the only thing that actually sustains them. The hard-won happiness is real. It just costs something to get there.
Anyone who has followed Hazard and Somerset knows this is the emotional spine of the entire series. The chart doesn’t lie.
Gregory Ashe’s Hazard and Somerset series is available on Amazon. With over twenty books in the series, the best place to start is Pretty, Pretty Boys—though fair warning: you will not stop there. Here is the reading order of the series.