The woman was an insane egomaniac, to say the least. The Star Wars character she reminds me of most would be Ysanne Isard. She added some very nice stuff to the expanded universe at first, but it didn't take long for things to go downhill.

Karen Traviss knew virtually nothing about Star Wars coming into the job. This is likely why she initially wrote about 'new' planets and characters, avoiding 'old' things so that she would not need to learn about them. This was likely why she stirred up very little controversy with her first couple books.

As she gained success, however, she became emboldened and, perhaps blinded by her ego, failed to realize that Star Wars was something far bigger than just herself, and she began exploring 'old' planets and characters. Of course, since Karen Traviss was never a fan of Star Wars, and was never invested beyond her own writings, she showed little to no interest in making sure personalities and facts were accurately displayed.

This, of course, is where the problems started. It didn't take long for her to receive criticism and for fans to start telling her that she was wrong about several things.

One recurring theme in KT's books were protagonists who gave in to their emotions, however violent, and antagonists who were consistently cold and calculating.

That's worth noting because it soon showed that this wasn't simply a way of writing, but KT's view on the world itself. She had several emotionally-charged outbursts where she lashed out at anyone who would contradict or disagree with her, often acting quite childish, to be frank. Some notable quotes being:
Referring to fans who didn't agree with her collectively as "the Talifans"
"Because I bloody said so!!"

That said, it started becoming more and more clear that KT's protagonists were so emotional because she herself was emotionally unstable.

On several occasions throughout her later writings she purposely wrote things in her books as acts of revenge against the fan base, such as the short story about the RCs infiltrating a factory on the planet Fest, and arguably when she killed off Pellaeon and Mara Jade, though perhaps she did those latter two simply because of how blinded she was by her own ego. At any rate, she never read anything written by Timothy Zahn, or any other author for that matter. So she obviously wasn't invested in either character, or really anything outside of her own control.

To summarize, there's a reason Karen Traviss never read anything before being hired nor afterward - she didn't care. Karen Traviss was never a Star Wars fan, nor will she ever be. She got into Star Wars for money and personal glory, nothing more. She should've never been hired.

For a very long time, unfortunately, Star Wars was in support of Karen Traviss' decisions, and a rather unsavory admin on the Star Wars website known as Dark Moose acted as her personal body guard (she was notorious for initiating fights with fans and then pulling out when the tables began to turn, feigning that she was a victim). It was this kind of crap that drove me away from Star Wars altogether.

Eventually, even the people who work at Lucas Film figured out what kind of a nut job she was, and began retconing some of her more ridiculous claims. Furious that they would contradict her, Karen Traviss ragequit Star Wars, vowing never to return.

I think one of the main things that drove LF to eventually drop her though, was the rising popularity of the Clone Wars kids show - as it became more and more prominent, book sales, especially KT book sales (which had been steadily dropping due to how many enemies she had been making), made them realize that they didn't need her anymore, so if they pissed her off enough to leave, it wouldn't hurt them a lot financially.

About a year or so after this happened I learned about a lot of this, and I began to consider getting back into Star Wars.

Hopefully, Lucas Film has learned their lesson:
Never hire someone who doesn't give a damn about Star Wars, especially if she's a psycho b----. Maybe they thought after writing her first book or two she'd come to like Star Wars and be willing to invest herself more into it, but such was not the case.