The interviews of award-winning novelist raise two questions: After novels end, Do characters die? and Could characters be interviewed?

Obviously, some characters continue to live in book after book for many years. And if some characters continue to exist, why wouldn’t others?

If important characters are alternate personalities, then even if they do not have continuing roles in novels, they would not cease to exist. They would only be retired.

But, you might wonder, aren’t some people cured of multiple personality, and doesn’t that mean alternate personalities may be killed off, permanently?

No, you usually can’t kill off alternate personalities. If you ignore them or try to kill them, they simply go inside or operate incognito, which is how most alternate personalities prefer to live, anyway.

The usual cure for clinical, multiple personality disorder, is to get all of the personalities to merge into one multifaceted personality. Nothing is lost or gotten rid of: the single, merged personality includes all of the feelings and memories that were previously dissociated.

Of course, people with nonclinical, multiple personality trait, such as well-functioning novelists, neither seek nor need a merger. They prefer to write, make money, and win prizes.

So after a novel has ended, unless a character has merged with another character or with the host personality, it is probably still there, inside.

Could characters be interviewed? They probably could be. The practical issues would be whether they wanted to be interviewed, whether the interviewer made the effort, and whether the host personality blocked such an interview, to keep trade secrets or due to jealousy.