Coming September 2026

Tentative cover — subject to change

Book Two · September 2026

Dreamer

A Book About Building the Person
Your Dream Is Waiting For

"Who you are when the dream arrives determines whether you can catch it."

— Dreamer

Dreamers are not born. They are built. This is the book about what happens between the dream and the finish line — the identity work, the daily discipline, the people who push you forward, and the courage to become someone the dream can count on.

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♦ 25% of proceeds benefit the Marulanda Foundation

About the book

The Dream Is Not
the Hard Part.
You Are.

Every person alive has a dream. The problem is never the dream. The problem is the distance between who you are today and who you need to become for the dream to survive. That distance has a name. It is called the work. And most people never talk about it honestly.

Dreamer is not a book about motivation. Motivation fades by Tuesday. This is a book about construction — the daily, unglamorous, deeply personal work of building yourself into someone the dream can count on. Identity. Discipline. Community. Failure. Growth. What happens in between the dream and the finish line.

Told through personal stories — the Tuna Era, the Abuelos Soñadores, the Dream Pushers, the fracasología — this is the book Octavio Marulanda wishes someone had handed him years ago.

"Dreamers are not born. They are built. And the building starts right now."

— Introduction

What this book is about

✦ Why the dream is not the hard part — and what is
✦ How identity is built through daily practice, not one big decision
✦ The role of community and Dream Pushers in making it possible
✦ Why failure is not the end of the sentence — it's the comma
✦ How to let go of who you were to become who the dream needs
✦ What it means to become the Ultimate Dreamer

A deeply personal memoir-meets-guide in four parts, with real stories drawn from a life built between two countries and two languages.

From the pages

Lines That Will Stay With You

Who you are when the dream arrives determines whether you can catch it.

— Dreamer

You don't need to be amazing to start. You need to start to be amazing.

— Chapter 2

No is not a period. It is, more often than not, a redirection.

— Chapter 13

Inside the book

Four Parts.
One Journey.

Part One

Recognize the Dreamer in You

The moment it begins. Where every dream is born — in the spark of a childhood want. From the Christmas bike to the basketball poster to the business that starts in a borrowed dining room. The dreamer you were before life got loud.

Part Two

Build the Person the Dream Needs

The Tuna Era. The turning point. The inner work that nobody talks about. Habits as architecture. Setting a bar high enough to hurt. The version of yourself the dream is waiting for — and the daily practice of becoming them.

III

Part Three

Protect the Dream

The creative mind as a muscle. Going where you don't belong. Dream Pushers — the people who hold the ladder. And No as a comma, not a period. How to keep the dream alive when the world keeps trying to end the sentence early.

Part Four

Grow or Stagnate

Letting go of who you were. Why stop growing when you can evolve? The fracasología — studying failure as a discipline. And the Ultimate Dreamer: the version of yourself that, having made it, reaches back.

A chapter you won't forget

The Tuna Era

Every dreamer has a Tuna Era — the stretch nobody photographs, the chapter that doesn't make the highlight reel. For Octavio and his twin brother, it was cans of tuna, newspaper routes at 11:45pm, 29-cent hamburgers on Tuesdays, and a 10-by-10 windowless office where they kept dreaming anyway.

"The Tuna Era is where you find out what you are actually made of."

— Chapter 4, Dreamer

First, read

How to Stop
Thinking Negatively

Available now

Before you can catch the dream, you need the right operating system. Book 1 rewires the mind. Book 2 builds the person. Together, they form a complete blueprint for becoming who you are meant to be.

Explore Book 1 →

September 2026

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About the author

Octavio Marulanda

Octavio Marulanda is a Colombian-American author writing at the intersection of neuroscience, identity, and the daily discipline of building a life worth living. His first book rewired the mind. His second book builds the person. He writes before the world wakes up — and has been doing so his whole life.

Dreamer is his most personal work — a memoir-meets-guide built from the real stories of immigrant dreamers, a Tuna Era, a wooden prototype, a trailer driven to Las Vegas, and the quiet courage it takes to become who the dream is waiting for.