Stephen King has made a frank but heartbreaking admission about his own health and his worries that he might soon be at the end of his career.
King, the writer of many of the greatest horror novels of all time, is 77 years old now and admits that his next book could be his last.
But he also fears that he might lose his faculties, and even claimed that he scares himself when he can’t properly remember things.
Stephen King admits to his health concerns
King has been writing books for almost 60 years, and has given us some of the finest scary stories of our time, such as It, The Shining, and Carrie.
While those were all turned into equally as unnerving films - as well as one particularly controversial King book - there are some real-life things that scare even the ‘King of Horror’ himself.
Speaking to The Times, King admitted that he sometimes worries that his mental capacities are declining and that he might one day develop dementia.
In the interview, King said: “I wrote a story about the end of the world,”
The idea behind the story is that when one man’s life ends, the entire world stops with that.
“There’s a word for that and I can’t remember what it is,” he explained.
“It is the idea that we all contain the world and the world disappears when we disappear,
“There’s a word for that and I can’t f***ing remember what it is.”
When pressed on whether he was concerned about his mental faculties failing, King continued: “That’s what I’m afraid of,
“I’m afraid of that happening to me and every time that I can’t remember a word or something, I think, ‘This is the start.’”
The 77-year-old has recently finished another novel in his Talisman series and is not currently writing at the moment, but admits he likes to keep the ideas ‘fresh’ and ‘flowing’ when he is working.
In fact, he’s so prolific that he works almost seven days per week and writes up to 1,200 words per day.
King admits that his next book may well be the last
Despite clearly still loving what he does and his books continuing to be made into films and selling well, King is under no illusion that his career will one day come to an end.
That doesn’t mean he wants his work published after he dies, as he claims that would be ‘creepy’.
On his future, King said: “I have at least one more book that I would like to write, and beyond that, man, I'm not going to say...
“I’d like to go out where people say, 'I'd like another one.”
The latest of King’s works to be adapted for the big screen is The Long Walk, a book he wrote back in 1979 under the pseudonym Richard Bachman.
This dystopian novel tells the tale of a group of boys who are forced to compete in an annual walking contest where the slowest meet an ugly fate.
If any of them falls below four miles per hour on three occasions, they are shot dead.
The last one standing walks away with a pot of money and their life intact.
That film will hit cinemas on September 12 and has been directed by Hunger Games director Francis Lawrence.