KELLY BARE / for the Lincoln Journal Star

Full disclosure: Today's column is (A) entirely self-absorbed, and (B) a shameless sales pitch.

But you asked for it, readers and editor alike. So it's finally time to reveal the story behind the sketchy little bio that appears at the end of this column.

For the past six months, I've been helping to launch a new magazine for women. It's called Tango, it's about relationships, and our first issue is on newsstands now. James Denton, who plays the mysterious, desirable plumber on ABC's "Desperate Housewives," is on the cover, along with his real-life wife, Erin O'Brien Denton.

I've been involved with Tango since I met the founder — an independent entrepreneur with no corporate backing — in a publishing course at Columbia University three summers ago.

I've been a full-time employee since July. In that time, I've gotten a crash course in magazine publishing, coupled with a flashback to the startup world I learned to love as a dot-commer. Because we are a tiny staff covering a wide range of topics — fashion, beauty, money, travel, science, health, fitness, well-being, sex, communication and entertainment, to name a few —  each through the prism of relationships, I've had a crazy mixed bag of experiences.

In addition to all the story ideas that come from my own head or my talented freelance writers or my visionary, industry-wise teammates (an editor in chief from Vanity Fair, managing editor from Wired, publisher from Seventeen and creative director from Fast Company —all brilliant and routinely steering me out of the path of disaster), I get a lot of other input. I've quickly learned that anyone who has anything to sell has a publicist who's trying very hard to sell it to me, in hopes of an editorial mention.

I've been invited to an Israeli cheese tasting, an Icelandic skin-care products launch party and a Giorgio Armani cosmetics preview at a Swedish restaurant. I get something in the lipgloss, book, soap, candle, perfume or CD family most every day, unsolicited. Between typing that last sentence and this one, I just signed for an enormous FedEx package of Noxema brand disposable razors specially designed for grooming your eyebrows.

Some savvy publicists have realized that Tango could be a new vehicle for a certain category of product unwelcome in many mainstream outlets. I had breakfast with the publicist for K-Y personal lubricants to learn about their newest line, and I routinely get messenger deliveries of products with names like Royal Dragon.

Of course, Tango is not just about sex, nor is it just about things. Things are the least of it, actually. Unlike the shopping magazines that are so popular right now, Tango is about ideas and feelings, hopes and fears, dreams and expectations.

I think we've done some interesting things in our first issue; I know we still have a ways to go. I'll quote my very articulate friend Emily's reaction to our first try: "I think that one of the reasons there aren't any other relationships magazines is because relationships and love and balance are all much harder concepts to write about than fashion, weight loss and makeup."

She's right. When it comes to love and relationships and how we make them last — or don't — there are so many nuances and variables, so many things that science and academia and Wall Street and Madison Avenue try to capture or explain, but can't. And that's the best part of working on Tango: the opportunity to assign and edit thought-provoking, first-person essays, the chance to pick the perfect piece of short fiction or find the poem that says in 80 words what a reported article couldn't begin to say in 8,000.

So this year, this ever-evolving magazine is my Valentine. It's a heart-and-soul, work-until-11-p.m., apologize-profusely-to-the-boyfriend, try-to-remember-you-have-a-life kind of endeavor. It's the greatest feeling to lose yourself in your work, and also the scariest.

Anyone who's ever gotten swept up in a high-risk, high-return, bordering-on-glamorous venture — business or love affair alike — might be able to relate. It feels amazing to write that perfect headline, to fight for a story you think is truly important, and win, to help plan a launch party at Bloomingdale's with champagne and caviar and fret about what you're going to wear because "Access Hollywood" and EXTRA! and The Star are going to be there with cameras.

And then your PR firm e-mails you a clip from a media trade magazine that's gushing about all these great new launches, surely a harbinger of a better economy and better times, and you're feeling totally of the moment as you read about all the hot new titles — like Sly, a Sylvester Stallone-backed mag for active men 35 to 54, and Domino, a home interiors version of Lucky — and you're looking and looking for Tango, and finally you see it —  way, way at the bottom, in tiny type, under "smaller and independent launches," listed right above a publication called Geezer Jock.

Thud.

The magazine startup failure rate is really, really, really high, especially for independents. Still, one of our little sell lines around here is "relationships are to women as sex is to men." I don't know whether that phrase will help us beat the odds, or how well we'll be able to translate the concept to print, but I do think it's true. And the effort I'm putting into my relationship with this magazine, for better or worse, is one way I know that for sure.

Kelly Bare is a writer and editor in New York. You can find Tango at Barnes & Noble or order a subscription online at www.tangomag.com.