How To Use Hover Function To Stop Script

I am working on an image changer. I found that if I do a fadeout/fadein on an element and then try to do another fadeout/fadein on the same element it does not work so I put my fadeout/fadein inside a function and do all my work in the callback portion along with a call to self to make the function keep running in a loop. I just need to know how to incorporate the hover function to make the script stop while hovered over a specific element (will be one of 6 image divs).

Here is the code
Code:
$(document).ready(function() {
var newImage = 'img/1.jpg'; //starts the process with the first image (same as the one in css background-image)
imgreplace(newImage);
});
var files = new Array('img/1.jpg', 'img/2.jpg', 'img/3.jpg');
function imgreplace(newImage){
$("#imgbox").fadeOut(500, function(){
$(this).css('background-image' , 'url(' + newImage + ')').fadeIn(500);
var currImage = newImage; .....

I need to get the randomness fixed because it is still returning the same image sometimes but other than that it works. I just need to be able to hault the function on hover and let it restart where it left off when I move the mouse away. In the unhover section I will be adding code to place an overlay image and href link but I don't think that will be a problem if I can get the start/stop working with hover. Actually I'm hoping to set some variable and use it in my getNewImage function so the other images continue to change but getting the entire script to stop so all the images stop changing will be OK.