Who is Hajime Kanzaka?

Hajime Kanzaka wrote the first Slayers novel for Fujimi Fantasia Bunko’s first annual Fantasia Chōhen Shōsetsu Awards in 1989. It won. The publisher asked for a sequel, and Kanzaka has said he initially thought that impossible: his characters had already defeated the Dark Lord in book one. The second book became his turning point, written in a city precisely so the story could not be solved by one big spell, and he has credited it with teaching him how setting changes a story’s flavor.

His process, in his own description, is assembling scattered puzzle pieces rather than following an outline: after his editor passively accepted one plot summary and then loved the wildly different finished book, the summaries stopped, and the books were written the way they read.