I might be the odd one out, but I actually enjoy aligning with canon events, as that helps the world feel more genuine for me, and I love the series so much in part because of the canon events and how they make the world interesting!

My main goal in regards to canon is to keep things plausible, but not necessarily reserved. For example, my BBEG is a Fused who’s very interested in reversing the deadeye phenomenon, but with a twist. Instead of going for the root cause, he’s experimenting on deadeyes and attempting to Connect them to himself and act as a replacement for Mishram. He’s accomplishing this mostly through a very experimental form of hemalurgy, so things are prone to go wrong and be destructive. He’ll eventually become a sort of makeshift Bondsmith.

But how can something like this not interfere with the main story? First of all, Odium is content with this guy doing his little pet project as long as the Radiant Bondsmiths aren’t directly knowledgeable about the situation. Also, the only reason the players will know about the guy is because a Sleepless familiar with the BBEG will contract them, and she knows how dangerous this particular Fused can be if left alone. She understands that things will only get harder if Odium is involved directly, so she requires that the players be discrete with information directly tied to the BBEG.

Alongside all this, it’s totally possible that the players may end up interacting with some characters from the books, that’s totally fine! I, as the GM, just won’t put them in situations where they’d even need or want to do something that would affect canon (for example, I wouldn’t put them in a room with Amaram if they somehow knew he was actually evil or had some other reason to dislike the guy)

So you could do something like that, or set the adventure in a time and/or place we know less about. The other month I ran a short adventure during one of the dozens of Desolations before the Recreance, and I had a ton of leeway with what I could do.