all this talk about whether or not it should follow the books closely seems to be ignoring the elephant in the room...
if it follows the books closely at all it's going to have the GoT problem. (assuming its successful) its going to catch up with then pass the books, and then be writing its own story, before he gets the next book after peace talks written.
Maybe; well, no -- not before the
next novel. But will a DF tv-series beat Jim to the end of the DF story, before Jim writes the novels? Very very possible!
Peace Talks is #16. We have 5ish more DF novels, then the BAT. I don't really see a 1-hr episode being adequate for a novel. I also don't see a whole SEASON for a novel. Maybe... 3ish novels per season? Not sure. Depends in part on whether the showrunner (or whoever's making the call) wants every episode to end on a cliffhanger, how MUCH of the novels they include, etc. Maybe they'd be willing to fit it into a variable schedule?
This novel gets 3 episodes,
that novel gets 5 episodes, etc etc etc...
But the existing DF corpus should be good for enough time for Jim to get out at least 2-3 of the remaining pre-BAT novels.
Before Jim's RL blew up, he was churning out a book a year, basically. His newest books are getting bigger, presumably it will take him a bit longer to complete them... 15 months each?
He's alternating now between DF/CS novels. So, a new DF book every 2.5 years, which makes it 12ish years 'til the BAT.
If he kept up the novel-a-year pace, it'd be 10ish years 'til the BAT.