While promoting his ABC mini-series ROSE RED to the LOS ANGELES TIMES, Stephen King may have dropped a bombshell on his legions of loyal readers.

He’s planning the end of his writing career.

It may not be for a while (two or three years), but King seems to know his final book is on the drawing boards. As he outlined to the TIMES, this year will bring a book of short stories and the long delayed FROM A BUICK EIGHT (which he discussed in his non-fiction book ON WRITING) and then he’s on to write the last three books in the DARK TOWER series. He hopes to finish the TOWER novels within a year. Then?

“Then that's it. I'm done," he says. “Done writing books… You get to a point where you get to the edges of a room, and you can go back and go where you've been, and basically recycle stuff. I've seen it in my own work. People when they read BUICK EIGHT are going to think CHRISTINE. It's about a car that's not normal, OK? You say, 'I've said the things that I have to say, that are new and fresh and interesting to people.' Then you have a choice. You can either continue to go on, or say I left when I was still on top of my game. I left when I was still holding the ball, instead of it holding me.”

We’ll believe it when we see it. Though when we see it, we won’t want to believe it.