Oh, that is sad news. She was very good, and somewhat underrated, I think. I thought her books vastly better than Anne Rice or even the fun Lauren Hamilton ones, for instance. I must admit I've never even read Stephanie Meyer or E F Leonard's ones on this theme but I'm willing to go out on a limb and say SMC was better than them anyway.

Charnas was one of the last old-school s/f writers and the proof to it is that The Vampire Tapestry is what they used to call a "fix-up." She brought a certain psychological angle that was almost tender, I think, to the issue of being a predator (and worse, what appears to be a species of one!) embedded in a world of your prey.